“... housewife has for long been regarded by her, even if not by the law, as a family resource. It was John Hajnal in the 1960s who first alerted historians to the features of the marriage system prevailing for many centuries in Northern and Western Europe: late marriage and a sizeable proportion of permanent celibacy. The phrase ‘the Hajnal marriage ...”

“... United States who are wedded to less egalitarian premises. Confident of the obvious fairness of John Rawls’s ‘difference principle’, which states that inequalities are not to be abolished but arranged so that they are of the greatest benefit to the least advantaged, philosophers like Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge have sought to apply Rawls’s theory ...”

“... Court – all the justices save Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The fact that John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor are all Catholic may speak to the idea of diversity and variety within the Church, but it also shows how little Catholics in America have in common with one ...”

“... its contributors Zukofsky, Carl Rakosi (another Wisconsiner), Charles Reznikoff, Basil Bunting, John Wheelwright, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert McAlmon, George Oppen, William Carlos Williams and Whittaker Chambers, a friend of Zukofsky’s from Columbia who, among other things, later translated Bambi from the German. Quite a diverse lot, although most of them ...”

“... and surveyed Icelandic sulphur reserves. He had published some twenty books and could chatter freely in at least two dozen languages. No wonder this ‘nowhere’ seemed to hold nothing for him. He was bored and in physical decline; his requests for a transfer or early retirement were denied. There was nothing for it, he realised, but to let in the ...”

“... a’ ghàraidh, is placed in an open wall at the edge of the bank, so that wind can pass through freely. The bottom peat, the caoran, which has a greasy texture and is darker in colour – it tends to crumble when dry but is the best fuel – is laid out in the lower bog. A couple of weeks of favourable weather will allow the peats to form a hard ...”

“... note’, in which the dramatist is reported as saying that Christ enjoyed carnal relations with John, the beloved disciple, and that all men who did not love tobacco and boys were fools, Marlowe’s own bias seems unusually clear. Sexual relations between man and man (or man and beast) became a capital offence in England in 1533. Demoted briefly to the ...”

“... moment was perhaps the publication, while Skinner was an undergraduate, of a scholarly edition of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government by Peter Laslett. Laslett showed how radically Locke’s text had been misunderstood because of the ignorance of political scientists about, and their indifference to, the circumstances and aims of its ...”

“... with him (his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, her daughter Marie de Champagne), and circulated freely on both sides of the Channel. Where we have a name for a writer, such as Chrétien de Troyes or Hue de Rotelande, we have at least an indication of their origins – one safely French, one from the marches of Wales (modern Rhuddlan) – but when a work is ...”

“... the 1970 ‘School Kids Issue’ of Oz. The classic defence tactic was used of having counsel – John Mortimer QC – representing two of the editors and arguing issues of law, while the other, Richard Neville, represented himself and said things that lawyers were not permitted to say (though Mortimer was at his fluent best when not talking about the ...”

“... and depressed’, and criticises him on another occasion for possible tactlessness – talking too freely in front of his own mother. Williams is a good character witness: ‘What is heart? If we’re talking about compassion and sympathy, I’d say Joe had it. He showed tremendous loyalty to Halliwell.’ And while Peggy Ramsay, Orton’s agent, noted that ...”

“... or less confused in 18th-century Europe, when townspeople flocked to watch the oculists perform. John Taylor was the superstar of sight restoration, taking his show around England, Germany, Italy and France: many purblind celebrities would be subjected to his oratorical preambles (I quote from one above) before the scalpel plunged in. How far did Taylor’s ...”

“... All the same, being a gentlewoman was not just a matter of having money, but also of spending it freely, showering or at least sprinkling one’s dependants with largesse. An early reader of her accounts, her great-nephew Henry Jeffreys, was disgusted by her spending. As he saw it, her poor judgment and thoughtless generosity wrecked the fortune she had ...”

“... the Netherlands, or Belgium, the process was smooth and friendly. Britain, so the story went, was freely granting self-government to its colonies as the culmination of imperial rule, which had always had this as its ultimate aim – ‘Empire into Commonwealth’, as the history books used to put it. If for no other reason, the myth was needed in order to ...”

“... and butterflies to realise Titania’s fairy attendants accurately and Victorian artists such as John Anster Fitzgerald also borrowed features from the insect world to make their fairylands convincing. Today, through the ingenuities of CGI, many of these hybrids now speak and weep, appearing convincingly embodied and entirely sentient. Entertainments, from ...”