“... that we have a Republican president spending madly on controversial and dangerous causes, history may well be kinder to Clinton. History is unlikely, however, to look more kindly on Kenneth Starr and the people who kept him going, or on the other members of the much touted right-wing conspiracy that devoted huge amounts of time and money to trying to bring ...”

“... enough to produce these effects was intense reading. Modern readers of Julie and Pamela, however, may find it surprising that these novels in particular could induce any physical effects besides a narcotic one. Our current sensibilities do not generally take well to their massive helpings of undiluted sentiment. But as literary historians have long pointed ...”

“... The harsh repression of protests in the province of Constantine by de Gaulle’s government in May and June 1945 – estimates range from five thousand to thirty thousand Muslim protesters killed – is dealt with in a single, matter-of-fact sentence: ‘In Algeria, an insurrection begun in the Constantinois … was put down by Governor General ...”

“... with a bit of a breeze but a clear sky, when I boarded a small shabby Boston Whaler belonging to David Wingate. We were going to Nonsuch Island, the home of the cahow, an oceanic bird that was believed extinct for more than 300 years. Invisible most of the time and, like most Bermudians, off at sea as often as possible, it is unique to Bermuda and now one of ...”

“... protesters who were driven into an Odessa trade union building by pro-Maidan demonstrators on 2 May 2014, then burned to death. The most contentious element of the Maidan was the role of two far-right groups in the protests, and their connection with groups who collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. Both Svoboda (a political party, its ...”

“... intervention. ‘The miracle happened in that film emulsion. Who knows why?’ Writing in 1975, David Thomson compared Garbo to Christ – there were times in their lives when all they wanted was to be left alone – before concluding with a reiteration of the same ‘mysterious truth’: ‘She was photographed. She was all in the silver.’ Whether Garbo ...”

“... phrase, yet it is telling enough when you consider how one person, out of a mass of others, may become suddenly vivid through an accident of acquaintance or perception. Nussbaum does not cite Mead on this useful point. She tries to recruit help further afield, from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. The name of Smith is cunningly brought in, and ...”

“... an older man; André is the older man, an architect living in fear of losing his romantic prize. David is dying of cancer; Sophia is protecting a dead frog that has come back to life. Joanna is a corporate lawyer who has taken on an unscrupulous client to raise money for her ailing sister; Slimboy is a Nigerian YouTube star, fearful of his country’s ...”

“... brief. ‘Here is a very concise and truthful answer: the reason I write a particular story may be because something – which I call “material”, as in “raw material” – bothers me until I “do something” about it. In these cases, “bother” is wholly positive.’ A writer as capable as Davis of conjuring a found object from the merest ...”

“... prophecies of those to come? We will not know more until the court martial runs its course, and we may not know everything even then. The assessment has just begun. Meanwhile in the US the American Civil Liberties Union recently released another report listing various cases of torture and abuse, some already investigated and others, often involving the Special ...”

“... to self-styled patriots but also to satirists, most recently in the New Yorker, whose issue of 28 May featured on its cover Barry Blitt’s redrawing of the Iwo Jima event with the flag at half-mast and one visibly black soldier contributing to the effort: Iraq, where the US is not doing well and where the army is made up of ‘volunteers’ from poor ...”

“... brings about a substantial (and welcome) reduction by referring only to some two hundred thousand. David Chandler explains that ever since he wrote his excellent book on the campaigns of Napoleon ten years ago, he has been inundated by requests for further information coming from the widest possible variety of people, all of whom are, as he puts it, ‘caught ...”

“... call prominente. Among them were Richard Crossman, A.L. Rowse, Maurice Bowra, Isaiah Berlin, David Astor and the journalist Shiela Grant Duff, who, in 1982, published a book about their relationship, and followed it up with a volume of their correspondence. At opposite ends of the political spectrum he impressed Lord Lothian and won the affection of Sir ...”

“... create a background of deliberate spatial confusion. A partial explanation for this development may be competitive divergence: Donatello was driven to devise original solutions by the success of the older Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose mastery of linear perspective in relief sculpture could never be surpassed. But there can be little doubt that Donatello also came ...”

“... pointy teeth, all at once so English, so ordinary and so glamorous. And it’s four decades since David Bowie – wearing a lot of make-up and very few clothes, grinning through his pointy teeth, all at once so English, so ordinary and so glamorous – released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. ‘Five years, that’s all we’ve ...”