“... generally have experienced hotter summers than this one. The severity of this summer’s wildfires may ultimately shake the complacent into changing their views. Medvedev’s statement on 30 July that the fires sweeping the country were a consequence of climate change was perhaps an early example of this, but for the moment sceptical voices are not in the ...”

“... in the House. This leaves roughly 300 – twice the total number in the Dutch parliament – who may well be busy with constituency matters, but are unlikely to be very engaged in parliamentary or legislative activities. They remain largely anonymous, but they usually turn up, and vote as instructed. These are the MPs who are beloved of the whips, the ...”

“... to the path of dialogue. When Zhao refused to participate in the declaration of martial law on 20 May, Deng sidelined him. The military crackdown on 4 June left hundreds dead in the streets of Beijing. Three weeks later, at the Fourth Plenum of the 13th Central Committee, Zhao was officially dismissed from office on charges of ‘supporting turmoil and ...”

“... has settled over America like morning fog over the Mekong Delta. This resurgent popular militarism may help to explain the extravagant American praise for Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn. Reviewers and publicists have missed no opportunity to point out that Marlantes is not only a Rhodes scholar from Yale but also a ‘highly decorated Vietnam vet’. His ...”

“... says she will marry nobody but him, not even Jupiter. Catullus then says that lovers’ oaths may as well be on ‘rapida aqua’, ‘swift water’. Carson’s ‘river’ therefore flows speedily down the page, to the sea, in the shape of an L for ‘liar’, or for the turns lovers’ dialogues take. Carson’s writings show a brusque yet intimate ...”

“... to spirit of conversation, but I at the same time think the process of modulation and inflection may be quite as complete, or more so, without the external enunciation; and that an author had better try the effect of his sentences on his stomach than on his ear. This is Hazlitt’s way of avoiding claptrap; he’s pleased, for instance, that Shakespeare ...”

“... sealed by ten meetings between the two men during Bush’s first term as president. Tony Blair may see Bush just as often, but he doesn’t have the same influence over him. The military and political consequences of their collaboration, which was cemented after 9/11 and during the second intifada, have been devastating for the Palestinians. With American ...”

“... in the last two centuries have been as little involved as Colombia in international wars, which may be one of the reasons Colombians have frequently fought each other, and is certainly one of the reasons for the rest of the world’s indifference towards the country. Why do Colombians fight so much among themselves? In a recent House of Lords debate one ...”

“... become what Wittgenstein said philosophy was: a ladder that, once used to reach the destination, may be safely discarded. Having established a state and gathered most of the Jewish diaspora within it, Zionist ideology, in their eyes, has no further purpose and should be jettisoned, along with the unwelcome burdens it entails: further colonisation of occupied ...”

“... has suddenly given way to the mechanical.The burner, with its central circle of reflective metal, may be taken as a metaphor for the camera with its central lens; and, like the burner it ends up facing, the camera is an inanimate machine yet an instrument of animation, utterly lifeless yet impinging on the stuff of life. Kiarostami’s most frequent metaphor ...”

“... any organ for knowledge, for “truth”: we “know” (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd.’ If you cite this sort of passage from Nietzsche (or similar ones in William James or John Dewey) in order to argue that what we call ‘the search for objective truth’ is not a matter of getting your beliefs ...”

“... into his diary after a sermon spent mentally fornicating with a friend’s teenage daughter. In May 1667, 18 months after the no-hands episode, Pepys recorded another delicious hour spent alone in a boat. This time, however, it was not the thought of pretty girls that diverted him but his friend John Evelyn’s ‘pretty’ new book ‘against ...”

“... and so the old Philip Roth line – that American reality will outstrip anything the novelist may imagine – is borne out once more. As a result, this whole section seems not just pallid and unadventurous but insufficiently novelistic. It brings a kind of ‘news’ that is better told by others: if you want to know about American penal culture and the ...”

“... a strange paradox if narrative and history turned out to be incompatible. But the example of Homer may teach us not to take the paradox too tragically. The Iliad has a climax, the fall of Troy, but it has many perspectives, and it would be a drastically impoverished reading of Homer’s epic that saw as its ‘point’ an explanation of Troy’s fall. The ...”

“... I say I don’t know what they call people from Wakefield. ‘Desperate,’ says the son.20 May. On his way round here Antony Crolla comes across the railway bridge at the top of Gloucester Crescent, where an old lady is feeding the pigeons. Rounding the corner he finds a man at the edge of the flock of birds who, without any concealment at all, is ...”