“... John Kennedy was killed 25 years ago, on 22 November 1963. The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known familiarly as the Warren Commission, issued its report a little less than a year later. In the report, members of the commission allowed that certain questions remained unanswered, but their conclusion left no room for doubt: ‘The commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy ...”

“... pleased to be included in the massive antitrust lawsuit brought by the US government against 17 major Wall Street firms for colluding to maintain high fees for securities underwriting. Not to have been on the list would have implied that the firm was of little significance. Very occasionally, Goldman Sachs made a splash by landing some extraordinary ...”

“... in 1977 – requires that we take his views seriously, at least on the first of these claims. The major part of the book is devoted to explaining, in non-mathematical language, the new science that the authors see emerging, and to which Prigogine helped to give birth. The ideas are hard, but I think they succeed. There are places, particularly in their ...”

“... else would. And we all know that, in a photo-finish, Wallace almost did; or, if we are to believe John Langdon Brooks, really did. If philosophers have been attracted to these historical sites, it is partly because the pattern of simultaneous discovery might seem to substantiate a relatively uncomplicated, inductivist account of scientific innovation. Once ...”

“... Among the objects of hatred and ridicule in English memory the regime of Oliver Cromwell’s Major-Generals has a towering place. The division of the country, in 1655, into 12 districts administered by killjoy Puritan commanders was a brief episode, in effect lasting less than a year, but it has been reviled and derided from that time to this ...”

“... bluff,’ one of the characters says. ‘This is Detroit.’ He says this in the midst of a major piece of bluffing. So why is the title card so disturbing? Partly because of the absence of any indication of which facts are at issue. Given the manifest intention of the film to address urgent political and social questions, the effect of the card is to ...”

“... later, Cromwell became Lord Protector. Under the Instrument of Government, devised mostly by John Lambert, his mercurial but talented associate, he ruled until his death in September 1658, assisted by a Council of State, in theory chosen by Parliament but in practice chosen by Cromwell himself from among his friends and relations and army comrades. This ...”

“... them. ‘The monastery of Evesham was suppressed by King Henry VIII … at evensong time,’ John of Alcester recorded, ‘the convent being in the choir at this verse Deposuit potentes, and would not suffer them to make an end.’ Four years into the dissolution, there were few wealthy abbeys left to seize; the very last was Waltham Abbey, on 23 March ...”

“... at 60. Thomas Pynchon was a relatively young 51 when he won, but by 1988 already the author of his major works. The Foundation nonetheless took a big punt on the genius of Richard Powers, who was awarded his MacArthur in 1989, aged only 32. I haven’t checked, but he is probably the youngest novelist ever to win a fellowship. Generally unknown in 1989, and ...”

“... National animosities found ever increasing expression, as the economic crisis worsened. No major reform plan could get a majority of votes, so the Eighties passed in gridlock. Yugoslavs became increasingly prone to blaming each other. Even so, the increase in nationalism upset many people. In the 1971 census, only 247,000 people had declared their ...”

“... we cared to fire our Polaris missiles at them), this risk is an important one. The second major danger presented by nuclear weapons is vaguer but even more intractable. Perhaps if the Soviet Union and the United States could muster the political good sense and will to re-establish a stable and determinate balance of nuclear threat between them, and ...”

“... to her, the special place which the mining industry occupied in the industrial landscape was a major example of sentimental welfarism ... it had to be fought at any price. Moreover, she saw the political need to defeat the NUM – the Coldstream Guards of organised labour – if she was to succeed in her self-appointed role of kicking the whole trade union ...”

“... awareness of how little of British economic policy is made in Britain; the widening split in both major parties about the kind of future Britain should seek in Europe; a gathering doubt about the point of sustaining an imperial-style monarchy, coupled with what may be the final collapse of the royal family as an even faintly plausible symbol of what is best ...”

“... young European minds will be drawn magnetically to Britain. British universities continue to be major exporters to traditional Anglophone markets, sustaining an imperial authority long after Empire has vanished. Expatriate Britons and natives who have profitably studied in Britain will be found at leading departments everywhere in North America and ...”

“... on lavatory walls. This seems to be the message of ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Up-harsin’, one of John Cheever’s loopy, luminescent, triumphant later stories. The narrator, returning to America after a long absence, enters a stall in the men’s room at Grand Central Station, and there, etched into the marble partition (‘it might have been a giallo ...”