“... and Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005) – have been taken up by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, many of them in fields far from the orbit of science studies. In some quarters Latour’s ideas have proved unsettling, not to say infuriating. His statements, often in garbled versions, were targets of ...”

“... still an increase of 5 per cent. The budget will grow, but the military will shrink. There will be no more ‘nation-building’, with its long and expensive occupations. Overall troop levels will be cut by about a hundred thousand soldiers and marines. Fewer new planes will ...”

“... are not the end of the book. We turn the page and read a quotation from the American novelist David Markson: ‘Or was it possibly nothing more than a fundamentally recognisable genre all the while, no matter what Writer averred? Nothing more or less than a read?’ We can take the question as referring both to the described movie and to the describing ...”

“... for Interpretation at the European Commission, and he writes fiction full of ideas prompted by his day job. New Finnish Grammar, translated last year, is heavy with fear at what it might be like to lose language altogether. The hero is discovered in Trieste in 1943, with no words, memory or identity. He is thought ...”

“... than Dorothy (and for whom I almost invariably feel slightly sorry) assume that one wishes to be informed about the room or its furniture and pictures, which I don’t always. Sometimes I just want to look and occasionally (18th-century porcelain, Chinoiserie and most tapestries) prefer to walk straight through. Sometimes I actively dislike what I’m ...”

“... and Norman Johnny-come-latelies, consolidated their prestige and estates against the interlopers by inventing evangelistic exploits for ancient saints like Dyfrig or David. Malcolm Lambert is a judicious guide to the shifting opinions of scholars amid these quicksands, casting a sceptical eye even on Bede’s motives for ...”

“... in precisely this direction all the time? Nietzsche’s complaint is not that morality should be protected from explanation – this passage opens On the Genealogy of Morality – but rather that the ‘English psychologists’ appear to be driven by self-loathing. Under the cover of ...”

“... Wilson could imitate his true identity as a bluff, plain-speaking Yorkshireman to perfection. David Cameron once worked for a public relations agency and looks as though he was assembled by one. From Reagan to Schwarzenegger, the line between politics and performance has become increasingly blurred: during the US ...”

“... really go to The Last Laugh, the 1959 Cambridge Footlights revue, directed and largely devised by John Bird. CND was just beginning to gather momentum and the show opened with a huge nuclear explosion, following which, in the words of the producer William Donaldson, the audience was treated to a whole evening’s worth of ‘terrible gloomy stuff – the ...”

“... national humiliation under the heel of Western imperialism, bravely but hopelessly resisted by the peasantry, until Chairman Mao came along. It takes pride of place in school history courses; monuments, museums, books, films and TV documentaries are devoted to it; and there is even a computer game in which you can play at bashing the British at ...”

“... partisans, advancing a liberated national consciousness and such artistic truth as might be constructed on the wreckage of Mussolini’s regime.‘Freedom of expression and the need to rebuild a new Italian identity fuelled the fever for documentation, the testimony of real life, and investigation in a nationwide context,’ the curator and ...”

“... that are more than metaphors, are not likely to go away.Literature is full of examples, which may be especially instructive when they don’t concern literal ghosts. ‘It is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact,’ Marlow says in Lord Jim, a little before Stephen Dedalus starts his discussion in a Dublin library – only four years before, if we think of ...”

“... Economic Review in 2014, cheerfully conclude: ‘Decision-making ability, unlike preferences, may be justifiably manipulated.’ Just give the poor a bit of a nudge, and they’ll shape up.That was then. And as we now know, the libertarian paternalism of the Cameron and Obama governments gave us Brexit and Trump instead. As William Davies observes in Nervous ...”

“... footage of UFOs taken from US military planes, officially declassified and approved for release by the US government, was published online by an organisation called To The Stars Academy. The first video of two – a third was released in March – was captured by a US Navy Super Hornet ...”

“... a reason that escapes you, none of it any longer concerns you. You could call out, but what would be the point? You aren’t worth it, and the friendly overtures of others come as a justified reproach. Day by day, the wall grows a little thicker. Soon, you are no longer able to leave the house, your bedroom, your bed. The ...”