“... is proved right. This Pixar animation seems to be a political fable. The daycare centre may be taken to represent the public realm, the polity, and Andy the private realm, the family; the cowboy is the hero because he stands for family values. But why make the hero a cowboy? Boys may still play with toy ...”

“... have been subject to a special wealth tax to fund a dubious war effort.9 Women, in other words, may in extreme circumstances publicly defend their own sectional interests, but not speak for men or the community as a whole. In general, as one second-century AD guru put it, ‘a woman should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she ...”

“... require proof of scienter (knowingly fraudulent intent); it seems too that the attorney general may not even have to show that losses were caused by the bank’s behaviour. Nicholas Thompson, writing in Legal Affairs in 2004, reported that those questioned under the Martin Act have no automatic right to have a lawyer present and that the Fifth Amendment ...”

“... strange old books and ornaments brought from the old country. They know the words of old songs. It may even be that second-generation immigrants, feeling discriminated against, misunderstood and rejected by America, seek to immerse themselves in the culture and ideals of their parents’ homeland, fabricating a hybrid identity for themselves based on an ...”

“... and cruel punishment are all supported and in part identified by an immediate sense of what may and may not be done to people, a constraint that precedes cost-benefit calculations.Even though it is possible to construct more or less plausible consequentialist justifications – justifications in terms of long-term ...”

“... last boy vanishes,A blazer half-on, through the rigid trees.This isn’t quite cricket. We may approve the orderly syllable count, but the rhymes are playing truant. The vignette resembles the ‘lovely innocent countrysides’ Auden would later imagine, which allow for the possibility of ‘the sudden intrusion of a horrid corpse onto the tennis court ...”

“... even after he explicitly and vindictively repudiated it; indeed, of most of his writing it may be said that it is part of a theology without a God. This background accounts for Heidegger’s truly immense learning, but it also remains what Heidegger in a private letter called ‘a thorn in the flesh’ – the challenge against which he was determined ...”

“... The storm broke because of the surprising inroads of the New Criticism into the academy. We may consider the New Criticism rather tame, and appreciate it for introducing a tougher pedagogical stance, but traditional scholars feared that its exclusive emphasis on the specifically literary qualities of novel or poem would isolate these from the ...”

“... imposition of British law in Ireland which actually provoked disorder’. Consistency may be an overrated virtue, but it is a pleasure to find ‘Bomber’ Harris, advocate of the mass bombing of German cities as the way to win the war, thinking during the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1936 that ‘one 250 lb or 500 lb bomb in each village that ...”

“... generosity indeed to double the number!’ A list so nakedly daft obviates detailed scrutiny. It may be worth asking how Lever (born 1806) contrived to predate Jane Austen. If Spender wants to double her number, extensive independent research can be spared her. Five minutes in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature will give her roughly one ...”

“... which six Syrian MiGs were shot down; in a further humiliation, IDF jets flew over Damascus. On 12 May, Yitzhak Rabin, the chief of staff, threatened to invade Syria. An Israeli-Syrian war looked imminent. The following day, Nasser received intelligence from the Soviets that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border. This wasn’t true, but the Syrians ...”

“... is the first person I’ve spoken to who is actually looking forward to the Olympics.2 May. Jeremy Hunt has the look of an estate agent waiting to show someone a property.10 May, Rome. I sit in Rome airport while R. stands by the baggage carousel. We’re only here for four days, and did either of us have bags on ...”

“... since these are not finite possessions but transferable gifts that can grow and change. The ego may be founded on wave upon wave of reactions and violences of which it is only partially aware, but it is also founded on words, and words can be the communicants of gentle relationships between people and nations as well as violent ones. You might feel ...”

“... was allowed to return to Chile. But Britain’s sense of pioneering rectitude, justified though it may be, has tended to eclipse the role of the Chilean judiciary. In particular, it is widely believed in this country that it was only our extradition process which finally kickstarted legal proceedings against Pinochet in his home country. In fact, in addition ...”

“... more referred to than read. Its title, together with the generalised sense of ‘Whig history’, may have entered the language, but beyond having a vague awareness that Whiggish history is, in the terms used by another historical classic of the same vintage, a Bad Thing, many of us might struggle to state Butterfield’s argument any more precisely, and ...”