“... of Clinton’s disastrous Presidency with the new prominence of the Family Values theme may now be in the process of creating not merely one but two new parties: one for anti-FV Republicans, and a second for socially conservative white Democrats, as opposed to old Republicans and so-called coalition Democrats (i.e. very-liberal ...”

“... that Anton Chekhov, the most sought after of Russia’s eligible bachelors, had, in Moscow on 25 May 1901, married a Lutheran actress, Olga Knipper, at least a dozen women exclaimed: ‘Why not me?’ There were the painters: Maria Drozdova dropped her brushes and her palette when she heard the news, exclaiming that she thought God had reserved Chekhov as a ...”

“... completely and for many years have been in favour of them. I love intelligent women who eventually may beat one in an argument.’ As a born-again analyst, callow and idealistic, Wittels was something of a problem for the Vienna Society. Of his paper on the Russian revolutionary the minutes record that ‘the speaker expresses his personal dislike of Leontiev ...”

“... no ethno-historical evidence for any cult of this kind, but proposes hopefully that this may be because the prohibition on warfare enforced by the earliest Spanish colonial authorities ‘drove any such organisation underground’. But in the absence of any attempt to engage in an analysis of the social and cultural features of Anasazi ...”

“... amputation of several fingers, and his detoxification treatment, which started at the beginning of May 1884, had been a complete disaster. After hardly a week, Jones tells us, Freud and his colleagues Obersteiner and Exner found Fleischl lying on the floor, ‘almost senseless with pain’. Not only had Fleischl continued to take morphine, but after Freud gave ...”

“... prophecies of those to come? We will not know more until the court martial runs its course, and we may not know everything even then. The assessment has just begun. Meanwhile in the US the American Civil Liberties Union recently released another report listing various cases of torture and abuse, some already investigated and others, often involving the Special ...”

“... birds.’ Robin is more likely to be a nickname for Robert, though the resonance with ‘robber’ may also count for something, and Hood may suggest his frequent disguises, for Robin is a great trickster whose masquerades inevitably bamboozle his foolish oppressors: he specialises in pretending to help people capture Robin ...”

“... military superiority that Iraq cannot be governed unless a deal is done with the insurgents. They may also intend to create the conditions that would allow a ruthless vanguard party to exercise a power in excess of its numerical strength. A politics of conspiracy within the security forces, set against a background of widespread dissatisfaction with the ...”

“... in Scotland by loyalty to the ideal of a United Kingdom – remains fragile. Recent history may well be an unreliable guide in these matters, however: so far, at least, each looming crisis has been played out as farce. In 1970 the Scottish National Party won its first seat at a general election, its only previous victories having been in by-elections in ...”

“... he then shruggingly continues with his theme, ‘some of the things that ritual can do’. This may seem like an overly deft, even flippant, deflection of the possibilities of a committed theoretical approach, but to anyone who witnessed his double-act with Sourvinou-Inwood, not a scholar anyone would have accused of methodological flippancy or lack of ...”

“... rusted and warped. But in the past five years, China has re-emerged as a force in Africa, and may soon be the most important foreign power on the continent. At a summit in Shanghai in May, Chinese leaders promised a further $20 billion to Africa, though it is unclear whether this is intended to take the form of aid or ...”

“... the excitement of the success of their ploy, Blair and his (former?) spokesperson (ventriloquist?) may have strayed towards it. Given that it remains the case that a neocolonial war has been fought to please neo-conservative friends in an administration despised abroad and at home, this crowing may prove not to have been the ...”

“... the influence which is moved not, but moves.’ It’s a daunting job description. But although it may not have been common in the past century or so for poets to speak of themselves as ‘hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration’, the idea of a special bardic role didn’t disappear in the post-Romantic generations. It was still present, in suitably ...”

“... cultural difference, the nature of scientific progress, and the resources that Indian culture may still possess even though under colonial rule. It is not a romantic text, nor is it a militant call for the revival of old Hindu values. But Satyanarayana, who had a distinctly modern literary sensibility while still being wholly immersed in the long literary ...”

“... to self-styled patriots but also to satirists, most recently in the New Yorker, whose issue of 28 May featured on its cover Barry Blitt’s redrawing of the Iwo Jima event with the flag at half-mast and one visibly black soldier contributing to the effort: Iraq, where the US is not doing well and where the army is made up of ‘volunteers’ from poor ...”