“... remained ‘intrinsically … boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring.’The child can also wreak reciprocal havoc on the bewildering world, as happens in one of Gorey’s earliest books, The Doubtful Guest (1957), a story told in monochrome ...”

“... removal of ruins and the burning of ancient marbles for lime. Other popes followed his example. As David Karmon showed some time ago, the movement to conserve ancient sites in their current state was born in the same years when antiquarians worried that Rome was consuming its own substance to fuel its revival.Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson tells the story ...”

“... woman is an eternal problem that has no solution … She’s an imperfect project.’ This may be so, but imperfection does not imply a complete lack of progress. In the choice between the traditions of Mozambican society with its well-ordered but unbalanced polygamy, and the colonisers’ Christianity with its hypocritical monogamy which also ...”

“... also noted that ‘this objective is not formally stated in public documents.’) In May 2003, Jonathan Eyal, now associate director at RUSI, complained that ‘persuading international public opinion that a military action against Iraq was necessary should have been easy.’ But for some reason, even within the Anglosphere large numbers of ...”

“... Israeli officials, for a man detained as a suspect in the killings of two Palestinians. The man, David Axelrod, is not related to Leon Trotsky. A man with the same name, who is a descendant of Trotsky, was questioned briefly by the police in a case of mistaken identity. The arcane character of this item, which was at the top of that day’s menu, might make ...”

“... Arthur at his Sheffield Camelot. Routledge was spurned in 1983; it was a painful experience, which may have something to do with his feelings about Scargill. To read that his association with the miners’ leader was a ‘voyage of disillusionment’, that the strike, far from representing an upsurge of working-class militancy, was ‘all about one man’ (as ...”

“... social explanation adds significantly to our understanding of the development of psychiatry: it may illuminate the byways of the field, but the main thoroughfare is amply charted by accounts of the progress of medical science. Roy Porter’s sensitivity to this problem is acute. He prefaces his piece on Samuel Johnson’s melancholy by insisting: ‘It is ...”

“... unlawful – did so ‘spontaneously’, says MacGregor, or orchestrated by MacGregor’s Svengali David Hart, as others say – the new legislation demoralised the union, complicated its affairs, made its leaders look shifty as they tried to evade the sequestrators. But the two main battles owed nothing to it. In the physical battle for control of pits, power ...”

“... any social explosion great enough to change people’s lives ever can be. Paradoxical though it may seem, the lasting importance of the Affair was not all that much to do with Alfred Dreyfus, who, after his release, fought well in the war and then lived a quiet and unremarkable life until his death in 1935. Jean-Denis Bredin has provided us with what will ...”

“... Anglicans went, so did their prayer book. A heroic work of chronological listings published by David Griffiths in 2002 rounded up about 4800 editions of the Prayer Book or of liturgies stemming from its Scottish and American derivatives; around 1200 of these are in 199 other languages, ranging from the Acholi of Uganda to Zulu. Griffiths demonstrated that ...”

“... the buildings looking out onto the boardwalk and the ocean. I went to see him there. The building may once have been prestigious but now Volodya’s apartment was at the end of a long, black, mouldy corridor smelling of stewed cabbage. His walls were yellow with cigarette smoke, the main room empty apart from a huge plasma TV. He lives alone. A wardrobe ran ...”

“... out of a party.Great reporting isn’t usually harmed by the reporter having a poor character. It may even be improved by it. Lillian just happened to be hard-bitten in the right way. Her pieces relied on a ruthlessness, sometimes a viciousness, that she didn’t try to hide and that other people liked to comment on. She talked a lot about not being ...”

“... for that project, Herzog stands beside Chatwin’s leather rucksack, the gift of a dying man. In May 2018, a group of 48 filmmakers were invited to join Herzog at a workshop where they would ‘submerge into the density and mystery of the Peruvian Amazonian jungle’. They would travel ‘exclusively in motorboat’. Jungle tourism caters for all tastes, as ...”

“... little time for preparation as possible. In the event he was arrested on a Saturday afternoon in May for trial the following Monday. In the Court of King’s Bench, the attorney-general read out the charge contained in the information. Hone asked for a copy of the charges against him, but was refused one unless he was willing to pay to have the information ...”

“... not only needing applause, but needing (badly needing) other people to have a little less of it. David Frost once asked him what he wished he’d known at 20. ‘To hold my tongue,’ Gielgud said. ‘I’ve talked too much, gossiped too much.’ The fear of gossip can run a life, and sometimes ruin one; Michael Redgrave was an actor powered by ...”