“... suggests not only that we seldom strike the right balance but that the concept of ‘balance’ may itself be deeply flawed. The first problem with this notion is that it assumes security is a transparent concept, unsullied by ideology and self-interest. Because it benefits everyone – ‘the most vital of all interests’, John Stuart Mill called ...”

“... Fittko, who has no part in Birman’s story, made a preliminary excursion from Banyuls on what may well, it appears from her own memoir, Escape through the Pyrenees (1985), have been the same day. Fittko was a stateless anti-Fascist, an agitator and propagandist, born in Austria-Hungary; she had lived in Vienna, Berlin and Prague and was, by the end of the ...”

“... of the best ones, are bent on sin. Simply that (for the present venture in criticism) handling sin may be the right way to take hold of the bundle.’ The seven deadly sins and their antitheses, the four cardinal virtues and three heavenly graces, provide the book’s organising principle. A pair of introductions, ‘Sins, Virtues, Heavenly Graces’ and ...”

“... when the theory of natural selection has become an article of pop culture, it is faced with what may be the most serious challenge it has had so far. Darwinists have been known to say that adaptationism is the best idea that anybody has ever had. It would be a good joke if the best idea that anybody has ever had turned out not to be true. A lot of the ...”

“... which it is expressed have become hollowed out.From this selection box of youthful beauty readers may well choose Fyodor, the closest to an odd man out because he has no cultural pretensions and earns his living by manual labour. ‘Fyodor worked in beef, as a leaner’ – perhaps the most blue-collar sentence ever written. He cuts away the fat and ...”

“... and to meet him was a shattering experience of the kind likely to sabotage ambition – which may or may not be a good thing. You wanted to know his opinion on the possible outcome of what is happening here. The answer unfortunately is that he no longer cares to hold opinions, because his life has lost its taste. He ...”

“... lose to a bunch of pirates? The phenomenon certainly seems to demand an explanation, though there may be more than one. Wood starts with a broad perspective and narrows down steadily to the events of 14 October itself, though these must remain largely unknowable. She sketches out the history of the earlier 11th century, made confusing above all by the habit ...”

“... account of the ‘ruin of Britain’ and the Welsh poem Gododdin) either do not name him or may contain later legendary interpolations. On the other hand, we have a King Arthur with a secure birthdate and a clear biography, whom one can even meet and talk to. He is ‘a modern English Druid chieftain’, a Farnborough biker who, following a visionary ...”

“... loneliness . . . cooked away, as we spoke, like hot oil on a skillet.’ The habit may have something to do with Wray’s training as a poet, which tends to inflate the market for odd metaphorisations. But then Ezra Pound didn’t say the apparition of those faces in the crowd was like ‘petals on a wet, black bough’, and after a hundred ...”

“... and a rag, tag and bobtail collection of children followed along too. Ultimately, the mission may well have numbered more than 2000. It was the biggest military column ever seen in those parts. When they got to Timbuktu, Lieutenant-Colonel Arsène Klobb, the resident officer there, strongly advised Voulet and Chanoine to travel more lightly, advice they ...”

“... what innumerable doctors have had to say about it. This historical prudence is welcome, because it may well be that hysteria – this ‘Proteus’ as Thomas Sydenham called it in the 17th century – is never anything other than what we say about it, and that hysterics adapt themselves to doctors’ expectations and theories, thereby confirming them. This was ...”

“... service personnel had imperial backgrounds.) That such activity was reviled in mainland Britain may, perversely, have aided its development; if it had been more generally accepted it could have been monitored and controlled. But the existence of MI5, SIS and GCHQ was formally admitted only in the 1980s, and Aldrich gives several examples of GCHQ’s hiding ...”

“... given environment. Philosophers have typically taken this to show that biological generalisations may be valuable in prediction and explanation, but they are not true laws because they have exceptions. Mitchell takes it to show that we need to revise our account of what laws are: on her view, a law is a principle that can be used effectively in explanation ...”

“... with a sublime and exceptional love. Hence there neither is nor shall be anything or any fate that may separate me from your love, save death alone.’ The rhetoric of these letters is far from conventional, as some have too hastily claimed. Exuberantly stylised, they are obsessed with the philosophical essence of love. Defining love was a preoccupation of the ...”

“... Charles Reznikoff​ may be the most elusive poet in American poetry and his book-length Testimony the most elusive long poem of modernism. He is remembered as a kind of New York saint, an urban Emily Dickinson: the unknown poet, walking the city streets, writing intense, seemingly matter-of-fact lyrics about things he saw and heard ...”