“... and ‘walking through walls’ may have been successful against poorly armed, untrained young Palestinian guerrillas in a small refugee camp under total siege, but when the same Israeli units faced the stronger, better armed and better trained Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, things were very different. In operational ...”

“... after he has dug his grave, refusing to move into the immaterial. Concerning Vesalius’ series, Roger Caillois remarked in his essay ‘Au coeur du Fantastique’ that ‘more genuine mystery crops up in such documents, in which precision is of the essence, than in the wildest inventions of Hieronymus Bosch.’ In the dissection groups, imagination was ...”

“... ambiguity as well as ambition, with a premium on stealth as well as wealth. When Nigel, nephew of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, took on the job in 1126 (or thereabouts) he was simply called ‘the treasurer’. He resigned when made bishop of Ely in 1133 – not the sort of career progression to be expected these days. But the bishop of Salisbury, versatile in ...”

“... reality,’ one that is ‘far more permanent than the physical reality that surrounds us’. Roger Penrose, another unabashed Platonist, holds that the natural world is only a ‘shadow’ of a realm of eternal mathematical forms. The rationale for this otherwordly view appeared first in the Republic. Geometers, Plato observed, talk of perfectly round ...”

“... of children’s literature seemed unassailable. The latest adventures of John, Susan, Titty and Roger could safely be placed in the hands of the most impressionable child, and placed they were by wholesome parents every Christmas holidays between 1930 and 1943: Swallows and Amazons, Coot Club, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, every one a bestseller to be ...”

“... sedition: Sam’s coffee house was the base of the royalist journalist and official press censor Roger L’Estrange, who described it as a place ‘where a company of honest fellows meet to confound the lyes of a caball of shamming whigs’. And, while coffee houses collectively might indeed be public places with heterogeneous clienteles, each had its own ...”

“... only part of their wider investigation into the workings of nature. The 13th-century philosopher Roger Bacon thought that alchemy would help humans prolong their lives and prepare for the Apocalypse. Besides, the alchemist’s claim that angels rather than demons guided his work was sincere. Why, in a world teeming with supernatural forces, should this be ...”

“... vanquishes her pupil by giving him false, irresistible confidence in his own abilities. Roger Lonsdale identified a similar dynamic in Johnson’s sometimes disturbingly fierce reactions to the ‘seductive powers of eloquence’ and ‘overpowering pleasure’ of poetry. Documenting those responses while seeking to reframe them in general ...”

“... non-repeating five-sided shapes that violated the known laws of crystallography (that is, until Roger Penrose in the 20th century found the secret).It is this geometry as well as the mathematical knowledge that pertains to it that we discover, if we lean in closer – in imagination or reality – to the surfaces of the walls and arches and pavements and ...”

“... Further, as Russell recalled in his autobiography, ‘I was thought wicked for saying that very young infants should not be punished for masturbation. A typical American witch hunt was instituted against me, and I became taboo throughout the whole of the United States.’ His planned lecture tour collapsed, and no magazine or newspaper would publish ...”

“... morning alter Virginia and Leonard had talked with her and tried to comfort her. In September 1934 Roger Fry died of a heart attack. These and other deaths affected her deeply, and her letters about them are movingly simple. To Carrington: ‘I find I cant write without suddenly thinking Oh but Lytton wont read this, and it takes all the point out of it. I ...”

“... the sad, remote father, the brothers, particularly Sande, and his wife Arloie, Reuben Kadish, Roger Wilcox, Rita Benton. They write with respect about Lee Krasner and without parti pris. My impression is that the book is written with justice. Many of their witnesses are still very much alive. The book – which in certain passages could be mistaken for a ...”

“... fronted by Freddie Bird, a well-respected face, who witnessed the current Mr Squires (a pre-Bond Roger Moore) doing a runner, before the bouncers moved in.Home’s praxis is the stuff of London: confrontation, violence, ‘the poetry of the inarticulate’. He was born on the southern fringes of Merton (close to the parklands once tended by the bucolic poet ...”

“... to a chic bar in order to catch a glimpse of the patron, the legendary Georges Carpentier. I saw young boys, in Saint Malo, flinging themselves into Boyhood of Raleigh postures as they saw the four masts of the late Alain Colas’s yacht appear on the distant horizon, and I heard it pass from lip to lip that Colas was back again. When his rival, Eric ...”

“... night and sexual behaviour of the Haredim, to whom apparently sexuality is a fearsome thing. Their young couples, who barely know each other, are kept in total sexual ignorance until their wedding day, when they are hurriedly briefed, a procedure which sometimes sends them into shock. The groom is instructed to close all blinds and curtains so that he will ...”