“... as it is in a more prosaic sense: that is, by not really changing anything. Philosophers may talk about justice or rights, but they don’t often try to reshape the world according to their ideals. Maybe that’s for the best. Philosophers have a tendency to slip from sense into seeming absurdity: a defence of abortion ends up defending ...”

“... norms’. The qualifier ‘openly’ suggests that the most objectionable thing about Trump may be his discarding of the veil that conceals the scramble for power and wealth among the traditional ruling classes. Mounk does not consider the possibility that the official mendacity concerning illegal wars and assaults on civil liberties ...”

“... he complained that Roe made a lot of suppositions about the kinds of people Wordsworth may have known or may have met in order to fill in the blanks in his life story. Roe’s book does indeed say things like Wordsworth ‘could well have been’ among the Anglo-Jacobins who met at White’s Hotel in Paris in ...”

“... in control of his household, and who is talking to his wife, rather than to a mother who may be about to remarry – shows something significant about the psychological and poetic methods of The Odyssey, as well as demonstrating how difficult it is to be sure about what is going on in the poem. A sneeze or a quotation from The Iliad can convey power ...”

“... for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, one of the leading promoters of the Iraq war. We may never know what Obama thought Nuland was up to when she flew in to the Maidan to pass out cookies to the protesters in Russia’s backyard. But the message has got around by now that Obama doesn’t particularly want to know things. On Ukraine, he seemed far ...”

“... as an inspiration; defensively denounced, but perhaps more important, was Dylan Thomas. Thomas may have looked like an ‘ugly puffy fatso’ when he visited Cambridge during Redgrove’s student days, but he ‘kept visionary poetry alive for me and kept me alive too’. Redgrove’s finest early collection of poems, The Force (1966), has a title surely ...”

“... was faking messages from missing British liaison officers to keep up morale at home. SOE personnel may not have perfected their skills in duplicity – ‘love and kisses’ – but they were giving it their best shot. Shortly, secret services on both sides of the Iron Curtain would hone the arts of lying. Thompson died in early June, but it wasn’t until 21 ...”

“... was one thing, taste quite another: ‘According to the disposition of the organs, the same object may be both sweet and bitter; and the proverb has justly determined it to be fruitless to dispute concerning tastes.’ This is a rare instance, Hume noted, of proverbial common sense agreeing with philosophy. I like the Château Talbot 1983; you like Wynn’s ...”

“... in explaining why torture or other such abuse is bad in principle. The felicific calculus may well favour lynching an innocent man, if a crazed mob is gagging for it: indeed, the utilitarian grounds for pandering to the crowd strengthen as its bloodlust grows more fierce. Nor does it get us very far to be told that torture is wrong, as some ...”

“... once the balloon went up,’ he began to take preventative measures with an anti-tank rifle (they may have been the only shots Watt fired ‘in action’). The troops under his command objected to such summary treatment being meted out to the zoo’s two zebras; they were released and followed the retreating soldiers ‘at a wary distance’. One of the ...”

“... work. The contract – agreed without any competitive tendering – was signed in early May but, unusually, backdated to 17 March, two days before Lee Cain’s Zoom call. Paul Stephenson’s public relations firm, Hanbury Strategy, was given a series of contracts. Campaigners launched a legal action, accusing the Cabinet Office of apparent bias and ...”

“... from the various thens and elsewheres her wounded memory dredges up.Male readers (in particular) may be startled by the way Rosa’s experience of sexual assault acquires the status of countersubject. It is somehow communicable, unlike her experiences with her brother, even potentially an agent of bonding:Unspoken, not hidden, a nod reallythe night we both ...”

“... of welcome, in which a host invites you in with greetings, smiles and open arms. The gestures may be a sincere expression of friendship, but they are also, unavoidably, a sly assertion of privilege: this is my place, they say, and even if I tell you to ‘make yourself at home,’ you must remember that you are here on my sufferance. The double-edged ...”

“... which he believed his due. For him there was only the bitterness of the dishonoured prophet.’ He may be roughly right if ‘impact’ is measured in terms of immediate practical consequences, but his insistence that the book was widely derided by supporters of the Revolution, and did not cut much ice with the political Right, whether in England or ...”

“... any reason, moral or political, but only by positive law ... Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the laws of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.’ Although the decision had been long anticipated by that of Holt, history – encouraged by a strong abolitionist ...”