“... The debate between Porter and Murray lies at the heart of modern Australian poetry. In 1986, David Kinloch and I organised a festival of Australian poetry at St John’s College, Oxford and invited Porter to speak about contemporary Australian poetry. In his talk Porter paid tribute to Murray, whom he described as the greatest Australian poet. We already ...”

“... in the hope that they will defuse opposition to their schemes: it would be uncharitable to David Blunkett to suppose that he really was as naive as he pretended to be in pronouncing biometric ID foolproof. The more disturbing fact is that he could say it and expect to be believed. Given Kahneman’s title, one might expect a paean to deliberation, the ...”

“... Unionists as parochial know-nothings. Revisionist historians, most prominently Ian McBride and David Livingstone, have demonstrated that the history of Ulster Presbyterianism from the 18th century is characterised by intellectual richness, an openness to science, a commitment to progress and a taste for theological heterodoxy, notwithstanding backwoods ...”

“... have exclaimed, ‘the dazzling discovery of a cure that could soon be within reach of all’ (David Servan-Schreiber). I think it is going to take more than a drug to cure me. While this is not as exciting a conclusion as one would like, it seems to me that what I have been calling the tragic and the possession views of addiction can be reconciled with ...”

“... 16th arrondissement and walked a block, he was charmed by the fen-like view down the rue Félicien-David. His piece appeared a day or so later in L’Intransigeant, by which time people were comparing the streets of the city, dotted with dinghies and skiffs, to the waterways of Venice, but Apollinaire was reminded of a visit to Dordrecht. He recalled a small ...”

“... to read before they could write, but some may have recognised only the letters in their own name. David Cressy’s research on England suggests a gradual, if uneven, climb in male sign literacy, from 10 per cent in 1500 to 45 per cent in 1714 and 60 per cent in 1750. Female sign literacy lagged behind male, but rose steeply from a shockingly low base of 1 per ...”

“... realm of the airport showed up as an orange nimbus against the purple night sky. In the morning, David Cameron was holding an emergency press conference on the television stuck in the top left-hand corner of the breakfast room: ‘Work is at the heart of a responsible society,’ he politely hectored the assembled hacks, while we sloped off on our walking ...”

“... Camp Ashraf after the invasion came away convinced that the group could be a useful ally. General David Phillips, a military policeman who spent time there in 2004, argues that the MEK is no more a cult than the US marines: in both organisations you have to wear a uniform, obey orders and follow rituals that seem bizarre to the uninitiated. Positive feelings ...”

“... zealots, wondering if it had some connection with Britain’s commercial stake in Iran. In 1951, David Astor’s Observer was no less protective of British interests when it described Mossadegh as a ‘fanatic’ and a ‘tragic Frankenstein … obsessed with one xenophobic idea’. ‘There was disquiet across the white world,’ de Bellaigue writes, at ...”

“... to Newton, had its beginnings about 1125 BC among the Egyptians, followed by the Jews under King David in 1059, and then the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians (and no doubt the Chinese and the Americans too, though Newton didn’t mention them). But the main focus of Newton’s efforts was the Greeks. He dated the beginning of their entry into ...”

“... for themselves by taking outrageous risks. But the war reporters I knew best who died, such as David Blundy in El Salvador in 1989 and Marie Colvin in Syria in 2012, were highly experienced. Their only mistake was to go to dangerous places so frequently that there was a high chance that they would one day be hit by a bullet or a bomb. Messy guerrilla ...”

“... on Brunel’s Great Western Railway. Studies of Faraday’s experimental sophistication (by David Gooding) and his Sandemanian faith (by Geoffrey Cantor) have deepened, rather than challenged, our sense of his eminence. James’s work, meanwhile – in his own publications and his DNB entry on Faraday – has highlighted Faraday’s importance as a ...”

“... Journalism) to more than 90 per cent of all the deaths in drone strikes (the ex-military officers David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum). In March 2012, the New York Times reported that all military-age males, armed or unarmed, are considered to be combatants unless there is posthumous evidence proving otherwise; the Obama administration recently disputed ...”

“... Mail. In his memoir Cold Cream, Mount says drily that great editors are rarely nice men, ‘and David English was a great editor.’ Harry Evans defies that rule. And now that the 20th century has turned into the 21st, the English press is diverse but not financially vigorous; compared with the 1890s or even the 1970s, the outlook seems bleak. The threat ...”

“... question. Kermode invites us to pause over the elaborate social coding of Annan’s description of David Eccles as ‘a Wykehamist with the manner (so Etonians said) of a Harrovian’ – but also over the blunter evocation of Richard Hoggart as ‘the grammar school extramural lecturer’. Our Age had its traditions, ‘was a gentleman’, as Kermode ...”