“... the idea of direct elections to a consultative body, but in the 1970s Giscard gave it the green light, in exchange for the small states’ conceding a greater role to intergovernmental summitry. The first Europe-wide elections were held in 1979, but the Parliament’s function was still advisory. The MEPs were not lawmakers; their task was to issue a ...”

“... owned the world’. In his epic poem, Genesis, Harry is ‘the great cut-glass chandelier in whose light all objects shone or were dark’. He was a philanderer, which Rose hoped to cure by the simple expedient of making him a father. But her husband had mixed feelings about children and Rose required an operation before she could conceive. She waited until ...”

“... offenders, of whom fewer than half emerged in 1991. The rest died there, deprived of exercise, light, edible food, clean water, clothing and bedding, medical attention and legal representation. They spent their days in unlit concrete cells with steel mesh ceilings. High above the mesh was a roof of corrugated iron. The cells, 2.5 metres by three, were ...”

“... career had been made via the National Salvation Party, of which his brother was a leading light. A year before the coup, Demirel had put him in charge of the stabilisation plan on which the IMF insisted as a condition of bailing Turkey out of its financial crisis – a standard deflationary package that had run into stiff trade-union opposition. When ...”

“... told her, a letter is the photograph of a moment (and a different hour would produce a different light, a different letter), then his early efforts are studio portraits: ‘My room is in cream yellow with bookcases (for review books etc), two chairs and a desk and an armchair, a green carpet (to come) and an electric stove, very high looking down over Woburn ...”

“... may be used to describe a variety of topics. More specifically, I shall be describing the work of Donald Davidson in philosophy of language, and of Nietzsche, Freud and Harold Bloom in moral psychology, as so many manifestations of a willingness to drop the idea of ‘intrinsic nature’, a willingness to face up to the contingency of the language we use. I ...”

“... to the discipline of creative writing, whose ultimate commitment is not to knowledge but to what Donald Barthelme called “Not-Knowing”’. Formed in the shadow of New Criticism, the creative writing discourse still displays ‘not a commitment to ignorance, exactly, but … a commitment to innocence’. This commitment, this sense of writing being ...”

“... sky with the sycamores over the wall still threshing in the wind and the house full of evening light.In contrast the Chelsea Flower Show looks to me like hell on earth, with the main concourse as thronged as Oxford Street. The winning gardens seldom appeal, with the ubiquity of concrete always a problem (though not for the judges). As usual the proceedings ...”

“... towards ‘extra-human nature’. An Anthropocene that begins ten thousand years ago sheds no light on the ecological dynamic of recent centuries; modern Anthropocenes – usually conceived as more or less coeval with mercantile, industrial or postwar capitalism – either ignore the specific origins of the period or, at best, acknowledge but fail to ...”

“... Facebook is generally agreed to have played a big, perhaps even a crucial, role in the election of Donald Trump. The benefit to humanity is not clear. This thought, or something like it, seems to have occurred to Zuckerberg, because the new mission statement spells out a reason for all this connectedness. It says that the new mission is to ‘give people the ...”

“... as an ‘intentional assault on an individual’s innermost privacy’. Ironically, in the light of recent developments, it also noted that a ‘moral complaints bureau’ had been set up by the Screen Actors’ Guild to deal with ‘casting couch complaints’. We must hope the newly proposed Hollywood-led US Commission on Sexual Harassment and ...”

“... staff and visiting speakers. What does this mean in practice? The Act is sweeping in ambition but light on detail. It does specify that the use of university premises cannot be ‘denied to any individual or body’ on the grounds of ‘their ideas or opinions’ or ‘policy or objectives’. It also says that academic staff have the right not to be ...”

“... in which he figured.Speaking earlier about the business side of the magazine, you made light of it – after a fashion. But the sums of money involved must have been frightening –They became enormous. It was partly my megalomania at the outset. Although the New Review was famous for not paying its contributors, that only became the case in the ...”

“... nearly wrecking talks on strategic arms limitation (Ford’s young, hawkish secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, had successfully called for a freeze on Salt II). Castro was taking big risks, but as Gleijeses argues, his adventures in Latin America had reached an impasse, while Africa still offered opportunities. Cuba had its anti-imperialist credentials to ...”

“... badly treated by everybody.’ Caitlyn Jenner says she will still vote Republican, even for Donald Trump, despite the party’s dire record on LGBT issues. She is being consistent. As Bruce, the famous athlete, Bizzinger recalls, she had been a weapon in the Cold War: ‘Mom and apple pie with a daub of vanilla ice cream for deliciousness in a country ...”