“... Some murders – and some murderers – seem to disrupt that order more than others. McFeely cites David Baldus’s massive 1985 study of almost 2500 cases prosecuted in Georgia in the 1970s, which showed some remarkable, if scarcely surprising, racial disparities. If the victim was white the death sentence was far more likely to be imposed than if the victim ...”

“... government and security officials overseas and in the UK – among them, Assistant Commissioner David Veness, head of Specialist Operations for the Metropolitan Police, the officer in overall operational charge of countering terror in the United Kingdom. Dr Ranstorp is an expert on Hizbollah, and books such as Palestinian Hamas, Defiant Patriot, The Kidnap ...”

“... retaliated by dispatching R-12s to Cuba, bringing on the Missile Crisis. In this setting, it was vital to have a reliable locum in Cyprus. Visiting Washington in 1962, Makarios was told by Kennedy that he should form his own party, on the right, to check the alarming popularity of AKEL, and should desist from unnecessarily correct relations with the ...”

“... falls across them was felt already in the Enlightenment. The first major writer on the subject, David Hume, introduced it with the caveat that ‘the vulgar are apt to carry all national characters to extremes.’ But that was not a reason to deny their existence. ‘Men of sense condemn these undistinguishing judgments; though, at the same time, they allow ...”

“... evidence against Dreyfus, which in fact did not exist, could not be revealed in court. David Miliband recently used exactly the same argument to justify withholding details of Great Britain’s policy on and, the evidence suggests, complicity in rendition and torture. National security as the cover for the erosion of civil liberties is something we ...”

“... Mendelian genetics, and this was an achievement of the period from the late 1920s to the 1950s, vital contributions to which were made by the English statistician R.A. Fisher, a eugenicist and a devout Christian who saw biological progress as evidence of God’s active and continuing role in nature, and whose centenary in 1990 was not a significant media ...”

“... is of course that Russia has weapons of its own – notably energy, food and other commodities vital to the global economy – which its officials have explicitly threatened to deploy. They may induce hunger – much of the Middle East relies on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, for example – and desperation in regions far and wide. Who will the regimes under ...”

“... now be assured stable government, after years of squabbling coalition cabinets, but – still more vital – the prospect of a long overdue reconciliation of religion and democracy. For the central plank of the AKP’s electoral campaign was a pledge to bring Turkey into the European Union, as a country made capable of meeting the EU’s long-standing criteria ...”

“... Great Fen, was the most intensely-wrought part of the novel. Lucas had been waiting all day for a vital piece of hydraulic equipment (a Bernoulli meter) to arrive from Rome. He is suffering a bad malarial attack, and throughout the long sultry day he drifts in and out of full consciousness, through hallucination, memory and daydream. He becomes ...”

“... in other societies of the EU. Journeys, studies, a scattering of jobs: agreeable changes all, not vital issues. It is this expanse of mild amenities that no doubt explains the passivity of voters towards rulers who ignore their expressions of opinion. For nearly as striking as the repeated popular rejection of official schemes for the Union is the lack of ...”

“... to mislead these people: what was on offer was not a ‘humanitarian war’ but an informal Camp David. ‘It needn’t even be the United States,’ he continued. ‘It could be a great man. It could be Nelson Mandela … or Bill Clinton.’The beards were unimpressed. One of the few beardless men in the audience rose to his feet and addressed the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... New Labour and the Conservatives have encouraged; and the inept restructuring carried out under David Cameron in the early 2010s, sometimes called the Lansley reforms after their patron, the erstwhile Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley. The Lansley reforms left seven local organisations responsible for healthcare in Leicestershire. Five are part ...”