“... like these form a substantial part of the Batoni exhibition at the National Gallery (until 18 May). It has not drawn great crowds. It is advertised by a portrait of Richard Milles, which is typical in its confident projection of the sitter’s position and the painter’s skills; it could be that hackles are raised by the prospect of a succession of ...”

“... C60. This is a measure of activity rather than importance, but no matter how original a paper may be, it cannot change the shape of science unless it is well-connected. The active surface of science is thin, like the layer of living tissue below the bark of a tree. It is supported by the wood of old ideas (all wood is, strictly speaking, dead). As time ...”

“... show you. Does it matterWhy such graceful bells are so called(Seals of a medieval document?)It’s May, and Solomon says: Rise up,My love, my fair one, and come away,Winter is past, the rain is overAnd gone, flowers appear on the earth.A solitary cowslip has survivedUnder our beech the first grass-cutting.The time of the singing of birds is come.Takabutiin the ...”

“... Should you be so foolish As to go skinny-dipping in it. The crows flying and cawing All morning, may have seen a maiden Riding a billy goat – or worse! And now won’t give us ...”

“... so much of what is hateful about the world since Mrs Thatcher in that gritty hard little word. 2 May. Several of the obituaries of Alan Sillitoe who died last week mention how, when as a child he was being hit by his father, his mother would beg ‘Not on his head. Not on his head.’ My father was a mild man and seldom hit my brother or me but when he did ...”

“... was in many ways a book for its time. Tuchman’s story begins with Edward VII’s funeral on 20 May 1910. The king’s sister-in-law, the empress consort of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, wife of Alexander III, was there. So was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. And so was Edward’s least favourite ...”

“... manners and habits are part of a time that has almost passed.The figure at the centre of That They May Face the Rising Sun, however, is Joe Ruttledge, who has come home from London to live in this isolated place. He is both insider and outsider, watching and noticing just as a novelist does. His house resembles the one McGahern lived in, and some of the ...”

“... number of fratricidal horrors, of pointing a dreadful finger at the United States. Beware! You too may one day poke your cellphone through the curtains to film shaky clips of fires and explosions on the horizon of your suburb, it may be your feet crunching on the bloodied glass of a bombed café, it ...”

“... speculating upon possible contributors and reaching the cautious conclusion that Wordsworth ‘may well have contributed in some capacity’. I think that on this occasion his speculations might have been more bold. The journal is ill-edited and lazily conducted. It is an eight-page sheet, coming from the press of Daniel Isaac Eaton, a printer of great ...”

“... beliefs are false (though we do not know which), making our beliefs consistent with one another may as easily reduce as increase our store of knowledge. On the other hand, it is not easy to see how to conduct the search for truths independent of our beliefs. The problem is to recognise such truths as we encounter them, since the only standards we can use ...”

“... separately back in 1984 (War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean, January 1943-May 1945). Those diaries were published pretty much entire and contain fine descriptions of North Africa as well as sharp pen portraits and nippy asides. And besides, they describe an extremely delicate and fascinating mission, told as deftly as it was ...”

“... both – like Agrippa – predeceased him. Tacitus suggests that Augustus’ third wife, Livia, may have had a ‘secret hand’ in their deaths, though Suetonius in this instance doesn’t stoop to repeating such unsubstantiated rumour. Augustus then adopted their younger brother, Agrippa Postumus (so named because he was born soon after his father’s ...”

“... reasons given are pitiably sad. The most distressing case this surely of its kind and one that may awake the national mind to saner methods of curing a terrible disease than by criminal legislation.’ On 19 and 30 April Casement made further references to Hector Macdonald’s suicide. In March in the same diary, as Casement’s ship made various stops on ...”

“... for if she yield What from remorse her soul can shield – Or if she conquer the sore strife May yet have cost her half her life – The wound that ne’er can be laid bare May be the sorest scar to wear – The grief that brings no right to weep May be the one to banish sleep ...”

“... 2022, a few months after Khan was ousted following a no confidence vote, he got his own back. On 9 May 2023, PTI supporters, enraged by Khan’s arrest on corruption charges two months earlier, attacked a number of military installations. Khan was hugely popular, not least among the children of army officers, many of whom shared his Islamist and nationalistic ...”