“... other contexts than the doctrinal. By the same logical, even if not theological rule, historians may not expound one period in such a way as to make it repugnant to another. Like the principle of the Thirty-Nine Articles, this is one which is extremely difficult to apply, since it involves co-operation and give-and-take between people of widely different ...”

“... And he has been energetic in removing officials appointed in the complacent Brezhnev era. It may be that the Politburo got more than it bargained for when it chose Gorbachev as General Secretary: not only a dynamic leader able to shake the system up, but one who appears to have chosen to lead from the radical wing of the Party. The two latest studies of ...”

“... an appalling versifier and a devout right-winger – though some suspect that these manifestations may be the ingenious cover of a dangerous revolutionary. Cook himself, of course, A.B. Cook VI, is one of the novel’s seven correspondents, but properly speaking he enters the proceedings only half-way through the narrative. Before that, he has been represented ...”

“... On 12 May​ , ten days after Reform swept the local elections, Keir Starmer launched a white paper with the title ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’. The timing was a coincidence, he said: ‘People who like politics will try to make this all about politics,’ but ‘it is what I believe in.’ Among other measures – fewer visas for skilled workers, stricter language requirements, more deportations – the government wants to reduce the number of international students in the UK ...”

“... A fight between two males passes through three main stages, at any of which one of the contestants may back out. They start with broadside displays, move on to tail beating, and then to harmless mouth fighting, in which the pair grip and pull each other by the mouth. The rules of the contest are, according to Lorenz, strictly obeyed. Each fish only moves on to ...”

“... three who more than any of their contemporaries figure on the school and university syllabus. It may be said of course that the three of them have in common nothing more than outstanding accomplishment: but Crozier, cogently, I think, contends that this isn’t so – that the obvious differences between them mask a set of common assumptions. His tone is ...”

“... 2. enough. 3. lots?’), nevertheless feels it appropriate to point out that ‘Eliot’s caveat may apply to honesty in the marriage relation but rock-climbers would opt for complete trust and truthfulness.’ Truthfulness, along with every other moral rule, is capable of conflicting with the obligation to benevolence. Can ‘sociological ...”

“... than it seems. The whole point of the philosophers’ hostility to rhetoric is that, while it may not kill bodies, it can maim minds, securing assent not by argument but by an emotional manipulation which respects truth only in so far as it serves the end of manipulation. Therefore, as with guns, there is an immediate danger in this use, before one ...”

“... the parallel is in the willingness of many of the electorate to accept that whoever’s fault it may be, it is not the Government’s. Whether blame more properly belongs with rapacious trade unions, or cut-wage Third World competitors, or feather-bedding employers, or cartel-forming oil sheikhs, or merely the old impersonal economic forces (whatever they ...”

“... American bestseller list again, with the name ‘Winona Ryder’ over the title instead of Louisa May Alcott, as if she had written the book. But maybe Ryder deserves top billing, for pulling people into the movies to see Alcott’s March sisters updated for the Nineties. Directed by Gillian Armstrong of My Brilliant Career, with Susan Sarandon as Marmee, the ...”

“... left the Navy. With the final victory over Napoleon his career prospects were diminished and it may well have been, as Slater surmises, that he was disgusted by what he had seen in the service, particularly the flogging of men and the caning, or worse, of boys. It may also have been that his increasingly distressed family ...”

“... as possible with a loss that is permanent and irreparable. But no matter what the relationship may be, it has so little social recognition that a person with ‘only’ a dog for company is considered to be ‘alone’. Dogs have never been considered an appropriate subject for serious scholarship, certainly not in the humanities. Alice Kuzniar tells us ...”

“... cognitive and evolutionary psychology. Whatever reservations that second proposition may invite, Boyer is surely correct in saying that some beliefs about supernatural beings are better candidates for propagation within an established system of ideas than others. No anthropologist ever has, or ever will, come back from the field with an account ...”

“... Whim, caprice, irrationality and antisocial activities are given the protection of law; the owner may do what all or most of his neighbours decry.’ Is this the case? Hamlet thought there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Can our motives taint our otherwise lawful acts of ownership? If so, can those we have maliciously targeted prevent ...”

“... with photos of Callas and others; they were packaged as ‘FREE vintage divas’.) All this may sound fairly trivial (unless you happened to be singing Amneris), but the sustained furore it caused in the media shows once again how unstable, potent and alluring a mixture the words ‘Italian’, ‘opera’ and ‘singer’ can still be. Even people who ...”