“... to turn peasants against landowners, the nobility and state officials in the name of socialism. He may also have belonged to an even more secretive group called Hell, which wanted to kill the tsar in order to provoke a general uprising that would lead, it was hoped, to the establishment of a socialist government. Karakozov was tried and executed in September ...”

“... earlier used to devour a takeaway M&S red onion and feta salad – this is pure speculation, she may’ve just used a stray screwdriver or a handy Swiss army knife, or the salad may actually have been tuna-based) – then returns to the ailing postbox and … The tuna-based salad, which renders the speaker insane, is pure ...”

“... for his control of tone and genre. Open his trilogy, His Dark Materials, almost anywhere and you may find bears boasting their readiness for ritual combat in language vaguely reminiscent of Beowulf, and onlookers who enjoy the company and protection of friendly daemons, all of it plausible and smooth. But this new book has nothing to do with that sort of ...”

“... Today if ‘thingness’ matters, it is that of the screen. The picture snapped with a mobile may be charged with immediacy, but it lacks the power to reflect on the world it so eagerly, even promiscuously records. Or is it that the world ‘out there’ has somehow become invisible, little more than a background to the self? Salt and Silver catalyses ...”

“... that really is a big opening up of access to many millions of the ‘digitally excluded’. It may sound like a luxury, rich-world problem, but in fact it is the poor and old who at the moment suffer most if they can’t access the net, especially as more and more government services go online.All the big tech companies are working on voice, but the first ...”

“... though in a grisly illustration of the importance of freedom of choice in America, prisoners may still opt for the chair.) With typical fridge brilliance, Kinney claims it’s precisely our ignorance of the historical role of hooding that prevents people from protesting against modern day executions: ‘It concentrates all accountability in the ...”

“... 413. Looking inland from the banks of its rivers, the Naver or the Helmsdale, you feel they may well be flowing from some distant source in Poland or Siberia. Around you mountains raise up their grey-blue massifs, habitats of red deer and golden eagle, grouse and ptarmigan. Between these heights lie long straths and glens, well-watered and greenly ...”

“... has it that the announcement was removed only twenty minutes before the issue went to press.That may be as close to death as the TLS has ever come, but it has continued to have its ups and downs. Circulation rose through the 1920s to 30,000, then dropped sharply, down to 23,000 by 1934, and Richmond despaired of arresting the decline: ‘Even among my own ...”

“... his speech outside Number Ten on 7 July, his sole political resignation had been from Theresa May’s cabinet in 2018, the opening gambit in his successful campaign to take her job. In 2004, when his lies about his affair with Petronella Wyatt and her subsequent abortion were exposed, he refused Michael Howard’s order that he resign as a shadow ...”

“... in the 1850s, of a ‘milieu intérieur’: ‘All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment . . . The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.’Our bodies can only maintain homeostasis within ...”

“... and France – to organise a swift transition and abstain from seeking power himself. But in May 2021 he carried out a coup within the coup, removing the transitional government and taking charge of the administration, flanked by the populist politician Choguel Maïga. Between them they formulated the plan for Mali’s long ‘transition’, which ...”

“... as a Christian continuation of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne’s coronation on Christmas Day 800 may symbolise ‘the birth of the West’, but only as the point on which rays of influence from all over Europe converged. The dark octagon of Charlemagne’s chapel in Aachen contains the whole inheritance of the religious and political history of Western ...”

“... I have heard people say that the Budget was a bore. This may be true for those who had to listen to it or for those who are interested in minutiae. But as one interested primarily in economic strategy, I cannot remember a more intriguing situation. How can it possibly be right to propose a huge tax increase for next year, and an even larger one for the year after that, when by general consent unemployment is going to be in the region of three million and rising? I am going to argue that this Budget only makes sense on very special assumptions about the performance of the economy; and that if, a year from now, the situation is broadly unchanged – if, that is, output has not changed much, with unemployment still around three million and the balance of payments not in serious deficit – it will be every bit as wrong to raise taxes then as it would now ...”

“... James thought that the fear of open spaces could be due to a resurrection of an instinct ‘which may in some of our more remote ancestors have had a permanent and ... useful part to play’. Freud too saw phobias as having to do with self-protection, but where for James the open space evokes evolutionary memory, for Freud it evokes personal memory, and the ...”

“... true extent of his own involvement, as well as that of a mysterious character known as Dook who may or may not be the mastermind behind the drugs ring. The NDIU report he dismisses – supported to some extent by the then Assistant Commissioner Colin Hewett – as hearsay evidence which cannot have any relevance as long ...”