“... cent of available water is used for the sole benefit of Israeli cities and settlements. At Camp David in 2000, when Ehud Barak negotiated the future of the Temple Mount compound with Arafat, Clinton favoured another ‘soft’ solution, giving Palestinians full sovereignty over the mosques on the Temple Mount, while Israel would have full sovereignty under ...”

“... the lines of Gilbert Adair’s The Death of the Author (1992). As a comic extravaganza it salutes David Lodge, whose character Morris Zapp gets a walk-on part. But for Binet, riffing knowingly on narrative theory isn’t an end in itself. As well as being a kind of allegory, and an elaborate joke, his conspiracy plot is a way of arranging non-fictional events ...”

“... with Dr Johnson a growing taste for history writing that eschewed the ‘huge canvasses’ of David Hume in favour of more intimate details ‘applicable to private life’, the emerging streets and houses and the evidence of ‘customs and manners’ which were at the same time both ancient and familiar, transformed the experience of visitors. Hamilton ...”

“... outdoor gathering that broadly resembled the free festivals of the 1970s and 1980s, but with space rock and campfires swapped for cutting-edge electronic music and supercharged sound systems. The fun lasted a while longer before the final crackdown. On a May bank holiday in 1992, several traveller convoys passing through the West Country were herded over to ...”

“... died of before. Men dying in the time it takes to catch and throw off a cold: ‘One Thursday,’ David France writes in How to Survive a Plague, ‘sexy Tommy McCarthy from the classifieds department stayed out late at an Yma Sumac concert. Friday he had a fever. Sunday he was hospitalised. Wednesday he was dead.’ Later, there were tests. A virus ...”

“... be more empowering than to sit looking at an immaculate rectangle of water, a three-dimensional David Hockney which will never be disturbed by a thrashing alien presence? Neighbours lacking this obscene quantum of liquidity might well complain about the noise, the dust, the inconvenience and the damage to their foundations. It doesn’t signify. And ...”

“... later so we get off early up the M6 to Penrith and Brampton, hoping to have a look at the Written Rock, a quarry by the river at Brampton with an inscription carved by the legion that cut the stone here for nearby Hadrian’s Wall. But it’s too cold to go looking for it and it’s said to be overgrown and eroded now, but somehow to see the place that ...”

“... stay in London thirty years ago, there is an interesting exchange with the psychiatrist David Cooper. Sinclair: It seems to me that what has emerged from this Congress [the Dialectics of Liberation] is the necessity for what has been described as madness – as one of the few active means of keeping society alive ... Cooper: Yes, I think we’ve ...”

“... had rights to lose. He never denied that he had thrown something at Foucault but denied it was a rock. In his fury at seeing Foucault, he said, he had picked up the first thing to hand – a lump of mud. As soon as he had set eyes on the Intendant-elect his ‘blood had boiled’ and he hadn’t known what he was doing or saying. But yes, he added, he had ...”

“... humanism is essentially light. The peak performer goes with the flow; he doesn’t pretend to be a rock in anybody’s idea of a stream. He incorporates ‘change’ and opportunity. Jim Gray, an engineer, recognised the moment when it came. If he was to reach the peak, he would have to abandon that long-haired ex-sailor with Vietnam patches on his ...”

“... he has a fishy tail’). At Harvard, the celebrations included ‘free drinks, science-themed rock bands, cake, decor and a dancing gorilla’ (stuffed with a relay of biology students). Circulating around the university, student and faculty volunteers declaimed the entire text of the Origin.On the Galapagos Islands, tourists making scientific haj were ...”

“... as the valet’s perspective on the future of the continent. Thomas Meaney GreeceTwo years ago, David Cameron saw himself out of office, respecting the result of the referendum he had unwisely called. For three years now, Alexis Tsipras has clung to power in Athens by disrespecting the results of his own referendum. The Eurozone’s one-time guerrilla ...”

“... by a hierarchical structure of recruitment, first catching teens through their dabblings in rock music and games, and selecting the best for initiation into witchcraft cults, from which the ‘hard-core’ are chosen. The ultimate aim is to induce world chaos which will encourage the populace to accept Satan – in personified form – as the earth’s ...”

“... waving cushions and towels, and some were leaning out. It happened that one of the firefighters, David Badillo, knew two of the uncles, Carlos and Manfred Ruiz, from the sports centre – they had all worked there as lifeguards – and Melanie gave Badillo her keys to their flat, 176 on the 20th floor. (They still hadn’t heard from Jessica.) Badillo went ...”

“... influence may have been transmitted via this route, it is worth considering the case of David Koresh and the Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Adventists. The siege at Waco had an uncannily Zoroastrian ending. Not only is fire, the eschatological cleanser, the sacred element of Zoroastrianism; and not only is Koresh, meaning Cyrus, the name of the ...”