“... at the age of 30 has a 20 per cent likelihood of marriage, at 35 a 5 per cent chance, and at 40 no more than a 1.3 per cent chance.’ The ‘study’ was an immediate hit. It was discussed in newspapers, on television news and talk shows, and in movies, magazines, advertisements and greeting cards. The message was clear. Educated women were to feel ...”

“... is a novel about Irish dancers on tour with a Michael Flatley figure whose influence grows more sinister over time. Pounds of verbal oil will be poured into his perm; his bulge will almost rupture his trousers. His backstory – but surely you can picture it. One dancer is addicted to weed, another feels like he doesn’t belong, and eventually Michael ...”

“... Macron and Judith Butler), and his concepts – the postcolony, necropolitics, Afropolitanism and more – crop up everywhere from the Venice Biennale to newspapers and advertising briefs. It is perhaps surprising that such widespread acclaim has been given to a writer who is notoriously difficult to read. Mbembe has been accused of writing at a ...”

“... lie suggests that the bodies were deposited whole and decomposed in situ. The chambers measure more than two metres deep, to the top of the sediment at the base. The chamber openings are too small for an adult to manoeuvre in and out easily, and there certainly isn’t enough space for an adult to climb inside with a ladder, so the evidence suggests that ...”

“... Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.’ I heard him say: ‘Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based ...”

“... the strength of its ties with the US, the UK showed scant interest in the Schuman Plan, and little more in the preparations for the Treaty of Rome at Messina five years later. The future of the world, so it believed, lay in Anglo-American hegemony. It was not until after the shock of American desertion at Suez and the re-election in 1959 of a Conservative ...”

“... reading, especially in his poems, there is a real possibility that the books he read mattered much more to Borges than the mere events of his life. Six months before his father’s death, Williamson points out, Borges wrote a book review for an Argentine magazine which is much more likely to have offered the inspiration for ...”

“... the number of dead in China had barely budged: the epidemic there was under control. In the US, more than 23,000 had perished. By the time of Azar’s address to the assembly barely a month later, the Chinese toll had crept up to 4638, and was flat, while America’s dead numbered nearly ninety thousand, and the figure was still rising.That night in America ...”

“... in the Poor Law legislation for Ireland going through the House of Commons: any family holding more than a quarter of an acre could not be granted relief, either in or out of the workhouse, until they gave up their land.Thus landlords who wanted to move from tillage to livestock or dairy farming would now have a valuable opportunity to do so. They would ...”

“... Paul Vallely writes in Pope Francis: Untying the Knots (2013). ‘He tried to make us more like a religious order,’ one of Bergoglio’s students recalled, ‘wearing surplices and singing the office … Bergoglio brought in an arch-conservative, the military chaplain from Moreno Air Base, to teach. He seemed unaware of any of the teachings of ...”

“... languages, yet it is observ’d of them, they were by this made masters of the English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any school at that time. Here were produced of ministers, Mr Timothy Cruso, Mr Hannot of Yarmouth, Mr Nathaniel Taylor, Mr Owen and several others; and of another kind, poets Sam. Wesley, Daniel De Foe, and two or ...”

“... of a newspaper article he thought she might be interested in. They met for coffee and became more relaxed with each other. Later he recruited her as a member of the small rotating committee of friends, an editorial micro-minyan, to whom he sent drafts of his books. Roth Unbound has his blessing but wasn’t vetted by him, and Pierpont feels free to ...”

“... another corner, this time for keeps … The perception that knowing you’re dying makes you feel more alive is an error. I’m less alive. There’s less life to lead. I can’t give 100 per cent attention to anything – part of me is thinking about my health.There were jokes by now: ‘What turns fruits into vegetables?’; ‘What does gay stand ...”

“... support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating ...”

“... looking younger than she would have been at the time (37) and prettier than she probably ever was (more on this later), is copied from George Richmond’s chalk drawing of 1850. Gaskell – the least distinctive of the three – is represented as much by her dress and slightly haughty stance as by her profile. She seems to be looking down at Patrick, though ...”