“... the town’s physical beauty ... As a nature lover, Kinsey must have admired the campus.’ This may be right. Or it may be wrong. Kinsey may have been blind to the regional differences, indifferent to the town’s look, disgusted by the campus, too busy to notice – ...”

“... durable, ‘a unity of inspiration that radiates into plot and personages alike’. His poetry may be ‘of the surface’, but its complex achievements make it far from superficial. After all, ‘poetry of the surface cannot be understood without study’ and the immediate appeal of Jonson is to the mind. No calls of unconscious to unconscious, no ...”

“... he decided not on snow or lilies, but on ‘paper-white’. This association with cleanliness may help to explain why it was often invoked in medical recipes. One 15th-century charm to reduce fevers suggested writing nine apotropaic words on a piece of paper and eating a word each day (parchment wouldn’t have gone down so easily). More prosaically, it ...”

“... Senate lawn. The reporter asked whether this wasn’t beneath the aide’s dignity. ‘To you this may be a dog,’ the aide replied. ‘To me, it’s an ambassadorship.’Even when a nominee has bipartisan support, Senate confirmation takes a long time. Before being nominated, the appointee is investigated both by the administration’s political leaders and ...”

“... has for nearly three millennia been imposed from outside – is not as controversial as it may sound. Historians of the Levant and North Africa have chipped away at the notion that the label ‘Phoenician’ is useful for talking about the experiences, beliefs, networks or practices of such a heterogeneous group of ancient people.Quinn’s contribution ...”

“... Ray explained to his readers, comparison with the written entries will mean that ‘the bird may soon be found.’ Birkhead tells us that ‘subsequent authors revered Willughby and Ray’ for their system, and claims that it was in some ways superior to the one later devised by Linnaeus in the Systema Naturae. As a means of testing it, Birkhead takes ...”

“... remembered.’ Like being in love, yoga tends to produce banalities, however transformational it may seem to the person doing it. Carrère describes what it does to the body, the way concave stretches to convex, weight transfers from one leg to the other ‘as slowly as possible, like pouring honey’. He tries to remain detached when observing himself, his ...”

“... knees in prayer, attack the art or react sexually to it, however powerful our initial responses may be.The repression extends to what we allow ourselves to think about the history of images. Although museums now rarely describe non-Western art as ‘primitive’, it is still unusual to hear a European artwork’s original erotic, medical or miracle-working ...”

“... May and June are the worst months to visit Pakistan: temperatures in Lahore can go up to 120°F, and I still remember the melting tar on the road, which virtually doubled the time it took to bike home from school. I had been invited, however, to give the Eqbal Ahmed Memorial Lectures in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi ...”

“... to be an outsider, as not sharing a common identity. Thrown into the company of strangers we may turn inward, out of fear, or indifference, or the belief that only in that way shall we find our ‘true’ selves; or we may turn outward, anticipating interactions that offer neither a sense of wholeness nor comfort in ...”

“... argues, recognised as an offence justiciable in every country’s courts. International law may meanwhile have substituted sovereign immunity for divine right, but human rights law has since 1946 gradually broken through this shield, placing the worst crimes of rulers against their people within the reach of justice and beyond impunity. It ...”

“... to the police forensic laboratory. Few of the bombers are Iraqi (so they say), though the number may be increasing. But the organisation, the vehicles, the explosives, the detonators, the safe houses and the intelligence must all be home-grown. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told me that the Iraqi army recently found a workshop capable of turning out ...”

“... this idea, preferring even now to think of Brodsky as not much better than a traitor. They may have disagreed with the crude way in which it was articulated, but they would have sided with the official view of his departure: good riddance to bad rubbish. From a more cynical perspective, the removal of a talent such as Brodsky’s made things easier for ...”

“... closing with Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘industry and empire’, is more rooted in older approaches than may appear at first sight. And some of the detail, too, is questionable. Free trade was a remarkably tenacious doctrine, lasting well beyond the 1880s (in fact, until 1932). Revenue derived from direct taxation did not begin to overtake that derived from indirect ...”

“... you happen to be subjecting the neighbours to home movies. The ashtrays are overflowing. There may be an alcoholic, active or reformed, lying on the living-room sofa. Is he thinking about the pint of whiskey he has hidden under the cushions; or has he just got home from an exhausting AA meeting? He has a job he does not like and is not getting on with his ...”