“... state, poised between the last days of a constitutional republic and the republic’s takeover by a dynasty of merchant bankers bent on becoming lords. Two people assured that takeover over the course of three generations stretching across most of the 15th century: Cosimo de’ Medici, the wily banker who procured himself the ancient Roman title of Pater ...”

“... why not? – the INS’s Chief Obituary Reviewer (my sister Melissa) announced that she would be conducting a study of surfers, whom she ‘suspected were onto something’. Six months later, I and other INS committee members cross-examined her about her findings in an art gallery that had been adapted to look and function like a sinister Hearings ...”

“... why, for example, Joseph Addison would write a drama in praise of Cato; why this drama would be admired by George Washington and imitated by Eustace Budgell; and why the latter’s 1737 suicide note would read: ‘What Cato did, and Addison approv’d,/Cannot ...”

“... sense, art was a politics all of its own, pointing to a future society in which human beings would be treated as ends in themselves. It was a foretaste of utopia in its very uselessness. Before long, even more extravagant theologies of art were being launched. From Baudelaire to Yeats, the work of art was believed to reconcile the sensuous and the ...”

“... in County Sligo on the west coast of Ireland. It lies in the shadow of Benbulben, a plateau formed by Ice Age glaciers that is full of the fossils of extinct marine creatures. Out to sea reefs produce mountainous waves. It’s a place where men and their machines seem small. On 21 September 1588, three ships from the Levant squadron of the Spanish Armada were ...”

“... to prove their identity. Here, if you don’t have the right photo ID on the day, that’ll be it: no vote.When the government of a democracy puts a new obstacle in the way of citizens exercising their fundamental democratic right, it ought to have compelling reasons. Does Britain’s? The obvious justification for introducing photo ID at elections ...”

“... of England,‘Mr Godfrey, you ought not to run these hazards, you are not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here.’ ‘Sir,’ answered Godfrey, ‘I run no more hazards than Your Majesty.’ ‘Not so,’ said William. ‘I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without presumption commit my life to God’s ...”

“... reporting that the USS Gravely, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, had shot down two missiles fired by Yemeni Houthis at a US-owned container ship, the MV Maersk Detroit, in the Gulf of Aden. A third Houthi missile had landed in the sea. There was no damage to the ship. The Gravely was part of Operation Protective Guardian, deployed to safeguard commercial ...”

“... independents, Greens and Reform augur a far stormier first term than once expected.It would be risible for Starmer to stand in Downing Street and invoke buoyant optimism. If this is a new dawn, it is an uncertain one. Starmer has been keen to remind voters of his ordinary upbringing and Everyman qualities, but he is evasive and mutable in his ...”

“... The Iraq Inquiry​ , chaired by Sir John Chilcot and composed of five privy councillors, finally published its report on the morning of 6 July, seven years and 21 days after it was established by Gordon Brown with a remit to ‘look at the run-up to the conflict, the conflict itself and the reconstruction, so that we can learn lessons ...”

“... account says Pakistan), and forced to undergo a virginity test, Heshu was threatened with a gun by her father but saved, on this occasion, by her mother and brother. After the family’s return to England, her brother discovered letters in which she repeated her desire to escape. She was locked in her room and stabbed to ...”

“... been any great pre or postwar Jewish shoe mavins they would certainly have been pointed out to me by my parents, who identified any Jewish achiever in any sphere as one of the family: Alma Cogan, Einstein, Marx, boxing promoter Jack Solomons (the Sultan of Sock), it didn’t matter what they were known for, everyone counted. Even, like the Kray Twins, a ...”

“... of Military Justice and Nato’s Visiting Forces Act; theoretically, in a time of war, we could be shot. I had first met Harry Pincus, the charismatic founder of our station, when we were both volunteer ‘barefoot doctors’ at R.D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall, a halfway house for psychotics in the East End. One night, when Harry was ambushed ...”

“... and, on the other, the ‘external’ world that the creature lives in is sufficiently robust to be getting on with; and that commerce between the two, both in perception and in action, is typically ‘indirect’, where that means something like ‘mediated by thought’. But plausible as that may seem, the thesis of Andy ...”

“... word, and the particular nature of its strangeness may explain why so many people feel confused by or alienated from political processes. It can refer high-mindedly to ‘the political ideas, beliefs or commitments of a particular individual’. But it can also be more or less value-neutral – or indeed suggest a ...”