“... Volokhonsky’s 1990 translation – the translation of the notes is by Edward Wasiolek. In David McDuff’s 1993 version we read: ‘The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.’ And again, in Constance Garnett’s much ...”

“... a similar culture. Husain now thinks that Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned; in this, he agrees with David Cameron, who is upset by Gordon Brown’s refusal to follow up on his predecessor’s promise to eradicate it. In an email sent to various news organisations after reviews of The Islamist began to appear, Hizb ut-Tahrir said that Husain’s experience in ...”

“... that suited her best. Johnson was soon the star attraction of a circle that included Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Frances Burney and Joshua Reynolds, whose portraits of the group adorned the walls of the library in Streatham. Hester presided with remarkable wit, vivacity and in Burney’s neologism, ‘agreeability’; in both contemporary ...”

“... He then turns to Raphael Samuel’s interviews in Stevenage in 1959-60 and John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood’s surveys in Cambridge and Luton in the early 1960s to trace the way migration to the ‘new towns’ and rising prosperity affected those attitudes. Next he mines the questionnaires gathered by researchers working with Richard Brown on Tyneside ...”

“... a state of emergency, it went up to 176,000 a day. When George Floyd was killed at the end of May, sales went up again. Smith & Wesson had its best quarter of all time; gun store owners say they’re having trouble keeping ammunition in stock. The NRA isn’t wrong to take some of the credit: they successfully lobbied governors – and, when lobbying ...”

“... with Dr Johnson a growing taste for history writing that eschewed the ‘huge canvasses’ of David Hume in favour of more intimate details ‘applicable to private life’, the emerging streets and houses and the evidence of ‘customs and manners’ which were at the same time both ancient and familiar, transformed the experience of visitors. Hamilton ...”

“... to the flinty Wyeth’s credit, this overture was rebuffed.’ Nearer home, there was the case of David Sylvester, perhaps the leading British art critic of the second half of the 20th century. Hughes valued him as a friend and a fine analyst; he was also the best exhibition installer of his time. But he was a very slow writer with ‘an indurated ...”

“... later,New York was a far different city on this day than it was when he assumed the mayoralty from David Dinkins … You could read it in the numbers and feel it in the streets.Crime was down nearly 60 per cent. The murder rate was even lower; 1250 fewer New Yorkers were killed in 2000 than in 1993. Car thieves stole more than 111,000 vehicles the year before ...”

“... but I’m mainly bewildered by how much they care. The biggest constraint on my son’s prospects may be that, as a tennis parent, I don’t have what it takes.When Roger Federer was eight, his parents moved him to a new club, Old Boys Basel, which had the best juniors programme in the city. ‘You could tell he had some talent,’ the head coach, Madeleine ...”

“... Wyatt’s father is a scholar whose sermons are as likely to mention Mithras as Christ. His Aunt May performs killjoy Puritanism as if it were an Olympic sport: she even hangs up male and female laundry to dry separately. When Reverend Gwyon takes on simple-minded Janet as a kitchen maid, the household is able to match the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm ...”

“... were born and brought up in London, and went to St Paul’s) Robin describes the events of a May night and morning near the plantation where he was assistant manager in Kodanad, high in the mountains in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu. The previous night a leopard had killed a bullock belonging to one of the estate workers (my great-uncle refers to ...”

“... as uneasy bachelors than fathers or husbands. All three, indeed, if this is any of our business, may have died virgins. One of them took the view that ‘I have no ambitions and no desires. To be a poet is not my ambition, it’s my way of being alone.’ The cities in which they were alone were Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Dublin. The writers were Fernando ...”

“... are not expected to cause long-term harm … If you smell a ‘gas station’ like odour … it may be volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. The key toxic VOCs in most oils are benzene toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.When I went out on the sea from Grand Isle, which is hardly more than a great sandbar at the end of the watery land south of the city, 109 ...”

“... of borders, whether political, cultural or economic.The second way of thinking about fascism may seem more useful. Some far-right populists haven’t been content merely to display hostility to liberal democratic institutions, but have set about dismantling them. Under Viktor Orbán’s clientelist leadership in Hungary, the judiciary and media have been ...”