“... COP to write something for my paper, I told them, which that morning had published two pieces (by James Butler and Adam Tooze) about Andreas Malm, the Swedish climate theorist and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Malm says it’s time, I said, for climate campaigners to move on from XR-type theatrics to disciplined sabotage of fossil-fuel ...”

“... his prerogative; for this Melchizedek is Priest of the Most High God. The bread and wine, plus the grant of a tenth (or tithe) of all produce he received from a grateful Abraham, have resounded through the songs, liturgical practices and ambitions of clergy ever since. Most High God, El-Elyon: he is the chief and perennial inhabitant of this scruffy town in ...”

“... Act making it a crime to publish false criticism of the Government or its leaders – and that James Madison, the principal author of the First Amendment, had condemned the Act. It was a violation, he said, not only of the freedom of speech and press but of the whole premise of our new Constitution: that the people were to make the ultimate political ...”

“... The ‘nature of the presidency,’ Garry Wills writes, ‘was irrevocably altered by this grant of a unique power’. An uninhibited ‘crisis presidency’ was now ‘poised for hair-trigger response to nuclear threat’ and, by virtue of the president’s ‘sole authority to launch nation-destroying weapons’, imbued with a kind of superhuman ...”

“... villagers called her a moll heron, ‘all legs and wings’. Later, having read Freud and Henry James, she hinted at a ‘restricted’ upbringing, but she found refuge in her surroundings as well as her books. Lark Rise has some excellent descriptions of the Oxfordshire countryside, interrupted from time to time by the voice of young ...”

“... safely on the other side. Apparently Spartan virtue wasn’t dead yet.In the ghost stories of M.R. James, antiquarians are drier than dust: it takes an attack by a centuries-old ghoul to make them break out in a spot of mild tut-tuttery. In reality, they were volatile creatures. A visit to any ancient site but especially Rome – perhaps the greatest mass of ...”

“... stories of fictitious people in American films, and whose narrator is George Bailey – the James Stewart character from It’s a wonderful life. The family romance is the construction George Bailey discovers in, or reads into, the plots of the films noirs concerned: incestuous, adulterous, murderous and paranoid impulses are shown variously manifesting ...”

“... of upbringing without first (or ever) having to learn the theory. Suppose, however, that we grant Wong his analysis of ‘A ought to do X’ in terms of a rule in an adequate moral system applying to a case in hand. There is still a fatal flaw in his claim to have rendered the first four of his propositions true while making the last two false. My ...”

“... who constitute a priesthood: ‘the death-of-language writers are self-ordained priests’ (James Stalker, in Greenbaum). John Silverlight, in his excerpted columns about usage and abusage that constitute Words, is prompt to make clear that he is playing down, not laying down, the law: ‘What I am not, to the disappointment of some colleagues, is a ...”

“... unthinkable. Campos interprets this as a problem of social psychology, whereby fellow fans grant one another permission to become ever more unhinged in their devotion, a kind of arms race in unreason. But the internet also does away with the technological bottleneck (the finite bandwidth of the printing press) that had once required the bourgeoisie to ...”

“... English lessons and a few translations. Of that sum, £175 came from Pound’s initiatives (a grant from the Civil List, a subvention from the Society of Authors and an anonymous donation). The rest came from Harriet Weaver, who retroactively paid Joyce £50 for the serialisation of A Portrait and £25 in advance for the serialisation of Ulysses. These ...”

“... had, after all, nothing to lose: no degree of humility would have persuaded the Government to grant the reform they sought, and the ‘firm’ and ‘manly’ tone of their writings was chiefly designed to establish that they regarded themselves as citizens, not as subjects. For those with no great curiosity about the LCS, the most interesting thing in ...”

“... to their food. The two, clearly regulars, were an older version of the farm couple straight out of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, transposed to the mid-Atlantic region. Thom, not at all charmed by the restaurant, and oblivious to the elderly couple, after a couple of drinks launched into an extended graphic reprise of some pederastic debacle circa 1970. I was ...”

“... Williams liked these a great deal, and wrote to say so. He also tried to persuade his publisher, James Laughlin at New Directions, to take her on, though to no avail. In reply he received from Nardi a long series of bitter missives that castigate him for smugness and selfishness, and reveal her own despair: ‘Your whole relationship with me,’ she tells ...”

“... countries’ rulers. In his memoir, My Mission in Israel, 1948-51, America’s first Ambassador, James McDonald, quotes the rationale for US support of Israel that a ‘high Israeli official’ proposed to the Embassy in 1948: 1. The United States has a firm friend in the state of Israel, which is oriented toward the West politically and culturally and ...”