“... is a remarkable woman, for who else could think of such a thing? Some of the older ones stood by thinking, no doubt, that the English are mad, quite mad. But they smiled benignly and were amused. After this, group conversations took place. Playing musical chairs with the Nazis (and letting them win) seems almost too perfect an image for the particular ...”

“... cult, having excelled in genres where attachments are warmest and the cool touch of analysis can be most resented, such as popular religious writing and children’s literature. That he was also a noted scholar and academic only makes appraisal of his achievements more perilous, since one group of loyalists will fear that focusing on his celebrity among ...”

“... rather open scrawl,’ he said, ‘while one’s eyes are fixed to the road is the only trick to be mastered.’ He could hit it, when he chose, in a couple of lines. ‘The duty of every honest American/is to emigrate.’ ‘Recycling has grown to be/a major part of the pollution industry.’ The face on the Carcanet ...”

“... This is how it begins: July 26 2010. Today would be her wedding anniversary. Joan Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo, was married at the Cathedral of St John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in New York in 2003. Dates are important. In a writer as fastidious as Didion they carry a lot of weight. Detail matters too, sometimes more than the main thing, or instead of it: Seven years ago today we took the leis from the florist’s boxes and shook the water in which they were packed onto the grass … The white peacock spread his fan ...”

“... even among his friends, who remember Hamish Henderson as a chaotic figure who could most often be found soliloquising in Sandy Bell’s, a favourite pub near Edinburgh University. Was he one of the ‘lowest of men’, spilling whisky and sliding off his stool as he launched into another ballad? Or was he a seer, defying body and convention to ‘soar like ...”

“... infilling its hollows with embankments, adding to the alterations already made to the landscape by abandoned quarries that had left behind manmade cliffs of whinstone and ponds of dark, still water. By the 1950s the only farmland left was a potato field and a stretch of grazing that supported two Clydesdale horses we knew ...”

“... as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase ‘man-made famine’ as if such events were unusual.Over the last half-century, famines have become rarer and less lethal. Last year I came close to thinking that they might have come to an end. But ...”

“... Holland’s eloquent afterword reminds us, Barton’s interest in the topic had first been excited by her reading of Ben Jonson’s Robin Hood play, The Sad Shepherd, for her monograph on Shakespeare’s great rival. Given this history, it may seem surprising that The Shakespearean Forest is not a longer book, but Barton became almost blind as a result of ...”

“... In​ the early 1960s, David Hockney made a series of etchings inspired by the poems of Constantine Cavafy; he went to Egypt to discover the places Cavafy had drunk coffee and picked up lovers, but in the images it’s mainly Hockney’s own life and friends who figure. The etchings touch on rapture, and the frankness of their erotic pleasure at the sight and memory of boys in bed brought Cavafy to a new, wide readership ...”

“... breast cancer. If a virus enters her body, even years after pregnancy, cells from the foetus may be among the first to attack it. But they may also make her more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and scleroderma. And this DNA transfer works both ways: a pregnant woman’s cells – with her complete set of DNA – can enter the ...”

“... suit had its own atmosphere; each was designed to fit its astronaut perfectly. ‘Turned out to be one of the most widely photographed spacecrafts in history,’ Armstrong said. ‘That was no doubt due to the fact it was so photogenic. Its true beauty, however, was that it worked. It was tough, reliable and almost cuddly.’ In front of Aldrin is his ...”

“... Several received letters from the Home Office informing them that their deportation would not be delayed by their action, in fact it was more likely to be brought forward. Serco, the private company that runs Yarl’s Wood, denied that the hunger strike was taking place. (Despite ...”

“... In October 2016, a NHS pandemic planning operation, Exercise Cygnus – the name perhaps inspired by avian flu, or the belief that it addressed a ‘black swan’ event – revealed the service’s inability to cope with a pandemic surge, and raised particular concerns about the amount of Personal Protective Equipment available for staff and the supply of ...”

“... is written in the shadow of The Crown, ‘the popular Netflix series’ in which she was played by Nancy Carroll with Helena Bonham Carter as Margaret. In the book’s prologue, she describes Bonham Carter, who ‘as it happens’ is a cousin of Glenconner’s late husband, Colin Tennant (Lord Glenconner), coming for tea and taking copious notes. It was at ...”

“... of The Ring and the Book Browning delivers one of the most staggering mule-kicks ever meted out by an author to his readers. Bear in mind that the poem is more than 21,000 lines of blank verse – about twice the length of Paradise Lost. It was published in four monthly instalments, each containing three books of the poem, which appeared from November 1868 ...”