“... the result of a very long chain of accidents, explainable only in terms of the non-purposive laws of particle physics. That the process ever got started, with the formation of a suitable self-replicating molecule, seems to have depended on a chemical accident, though it is not possible at present to construct a realistic scenario that makes probable its ...”

“... hearts, and made legible to their eyes, the law of Christianity in its central harmony with the laws of the Jew and of the Greek: and gave them the glories of Venetian art in true inheritance from the angels of that Athenian Rock, above which Ion spread his starry tapestry, and under whose shadow his mother had gathered the crocus in the dew. In The Queen ...”

“... admiration of patriots in the American colonies. She corresponded with Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, and with Mercy Otis Warren, later herself to become a historian of the American Revolution. In 1784-85 she visited America, meeting George Washington. The next year she visited France, and her final publication, which came out in 1791, was a pamphlet ...”

“... show buildings that are still quite recognisable today; pictures of the ‘Cromwell curve’, with John Fowler’s concrete bridge of 1867-9, are evidence of the scale of engineering work now masked by later building and softened by vegetation. The railways have proved adequate. Reading the plans of the St Mary Abbots Hospital, on the other hand, shows how ...”

“... Joseph Ellis should now venture an answer to this question, having already produced biographies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as a book about the 1790s, Founding Brothers, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Like many Americans, George Washington took arms against Britain in 1775 resignedly. He was 43, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War and a ...”

“... England (S.T. Bindoff, 1950), England Under the Tudors (G.R. Elton, 1955), Tudor England again (John Guy, 1988), branding the age – see J.A. Williamson’s The Tudor Age (1953) – with the logo of the double rose of the dynasty which, conveniently, coincided with a generous 16th century of 118 years, 1485 to 1603. It is a good question how we would have ...”

“... they owed to their sovereign and the example they ought to give to the country in obedience to its laws, to fight a duel’. The editorial lamented that affairs of state should be entrusted by the king ‘to persons whose intemperate passions were so little under the control of reason’. So it proved. Canning recovered from his wound but both men had to ...”

“... scorn and contempt, either by laughter, or by words, or by gesture’. A few decades later, John Locke too ‘spoke against raillery’. It had ‘dangerous consequence if not well managed’ and he urged young people to abstain from it. He was a celebrated mimic, who took pride in his own wit, yet he considered jokes risky because they easily gave ...”

“... early history of species ‘bagging’ in North America. Every ornithologist will know the name of John James Audubon, but there were many other impressive pioneers in recording life on the continent. I hadn’t realised the extent to which Thomas Jefferson, for example, engaged in speculation about the affinities of fossilised mammoth bones that had turned up ...”

“... Even incidentally, there’s a broad, unlikely set of references to literature – to Saki and John Fowles and Gatsby’s ‘old sport’. In more detail, a character called Clem Snide does a Sam Spade impression and spends his days checking into Hiltons on a headless-body murder investigation. The case involves drugs, black magic and an Egyptian sunset ...”

“... and tone is part of the method. It ensures that the reviewer’s prejudices will not harden into laws; the momentum of the sentences he hands down will always carry him towards self-revelation. This use of semi-colons exemplifies Empson’s belief that ideas are created and developed through dialogue. ‘Controversy demands imagination; you must try to ...”

“... of State for Foreign Affairs. That was fully up to the level of prickliness displayed by John Thadeus Delane, editor of the Times, in his famous exchange with Lord Derby over the accession to power of Napoleon III 28 years earlier, and serves to show that, even if the Standard had allowed its financial independence to be corrupted, it never permitted ...”

“... argue that the protections furnished by the US constitution do not apply to Guantanamo Bay. Even John Gibbons, who argued the case on behalf of Rasul, had to admit that the legal status of Guantanamo is ‘unique’. While other naval bases have had to bring their legal position into line with the laws of the host ...”

“... mental isolation and the strain of concealment. Loveless marriages cause more lasting grief than laws, and still do. Robb argues that the plight of the homosexual, as regards the law but not only the law, actually grew considerably worse during much of the 20th century. For instance, according to his statistics, arrests and convictions for ‘gross ...”

“... characters’ heroic struggle to master the material conditions of their world (technology, the laws of physics, the elemental forces of weather) was reduced to mere clumsiness.’*Faced​ with his character’s lack of agency on screen and the lack of affection at home, Keaton retreated to his baseball (the ‘MGM Lions’), his bungalow (‘Keaton’s ...”