“... other examples of animal behaviour, that the honeybee indicates the direction and distance of food by varying the angle of its posture and the length of its waggle-dance; that the calls of male chaffinches combine territorial challenges addressed to other males with invitations addressed to females, and that those of Campbell’s monkeys have components with ...”

“... Parliament. When she announced, late in the evening of 29 October 1553, that Philip would be her husband and king, England was horrified. It was widely felt that she had put religion and familial sentiment above the national interest: many believed that, with this foreign monarch at its head, the country risked becoming a Catholic satrapy of the ...”

“... his poetry has a prickliness about it, as did the poet: a quality of neither asking nor needing to be liked. In any event he would have been pleased to return home to Austin, where – after his childhood in Cornwall and degree at Oxford and teaching in Zürich and London – he had been living for the last fifty years. He owned a flash pair of cowboy ...”

“... of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest ...”

“... speed, seemingly unstoppably. Its ranks swelled and swelled with new recruits impressed by the scale of its victories. Supporters travelled in large numbers from North Africa and Europe to become part of the society it had pledged to create. Strict justice, revolutionary energy, old prophecies fulfilled: its millenarian ideology included plenty that ...”

“... of Di Benedetto’s style; not so easy to live with what that style chooses to show us. David Pérez Vega, in a blog of 2011, finds in The Silencer a phrase that ‘appears to be a synthesis of Di Benedetto’s reflections on existence’: ‘How can they ignore the essential fact, that error is incorporated into ...”

“... of a bygone age? Doesn’t it seem a bit authoritarian? The student suspicion of lectures might be one reason universities are increasingly keen to get rid of the job title ‘lecturer’, and make everyone some kind of (assistant, associate) ‘professor’. Until a stroke forced him to retire at the age of 57, Eric Griffiths was a lecturer in English at ...”

“... their houseboys were shouting at them to get out of the building. Barbara suggested it might be an earthquake but Mary disagreed and said that the boys were ‘overreacting’: it was only a ‘tremor’. So they went on with their chicken curry and its accompaniment of cucumbers, tomatoes and nuts. As a split opened down the wall, Hosking ‘felt a ...”

“... on the Supreme Court. The prematurely leaked announcement in late January took Breyer himself by surprise. But the leak wasn’t any more of a breach of constitutional decorum than the insistent lobbying that preceded the reluctant retiree’s decision. Breyer’s liberal allies had the noblest motives for expediting his departure. America’s Supreme ...”

“... Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR), which sets out the conclusions of a ten-month inquiry by an independent panel of experts into the operation of the Human Rights Act 1998. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice issued a consultation document, ‘Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill of Rights’, the proposals of which bear no resemblance to the ...”

“... deprived him of hair. But the speaking voice modulates into the parchment itself as it is pierced by a knife, folded by fingers and inscribed by ‘the bird’s delight’ – a quill full of ink. Finally, the speaker becomes the ultimate product: a Gospel book that makes its users ‘in ...”

“... i.e. the voice of the Likud. The Zionist Left – Meretz, Labour, Peace Now – should no longer be part of this game, but, alas, nothing will persuade it to distance itself from the military, even when this proximity sends the electorate straight into the arms of the Likud. After all, why should the voters settle for a fake when they can get the real ...”

“... came upon the book he required’. Neither the boxes nor their contents have survived, destroyed by the traditional enemies of learning: time, fire, Vikings, but perhaps more than anything reformers and reforming librarians. Lapidge’s book might have been subtitled, ‘An Enquiry into Works Available to Anglo-Saxon Authors Writing in Latin, Excluding Those ...”

“... a young couple would settle in a separate household near their parents. Marriages tended to be consensual rather than enforced by parental fiat, contracted in the partners’ mid-to-late twenties, and producing five or six children: this was a ‘low pressure’ population system, in which people had a good chance of ...”

“... thirty years, Ovid had been without a rival since the death of Horace 15 years before. Surrounded by second-raters and nonentities, he was unquestionably the most famous poet in the empire. Rome was his oyster, and his poetry took the metropolis as inspiration and subject. His love poetry brought a cool passion to bear on the sophisticated life of the ...”