“... did he do it? That’s the question for which Kotkin has no real answer. He concedes that Stalin may well have wanted to get rid of ‘evasive, self-serving’ bureaucrats and replace tired, ill-educated Old Bolsheviks with young promotees with better education, but, as Kotkin rightly points out, ‘Stalin faced no imperative to murder them. He could sack or ...”

“... quotes Mill’s wonderful remark about the ‘deep slumber of a decided opinion’, and we may well think that they also serve who only sit and sleep. For both Prendergast and Catherine Gallagher, the counterfactual is not any old fantasy but an alarm call for those who have been sleeping too long or too comfortably. There are attractions and risks in ...”

“... open to interpretation by lay people and physically to be handled much like any other book. This may also be true of other Protestant commentators such as Bush. In November there was a photograph of the President casually dragging a Koran across the table with his unclean left hand, while the mullah who presented it struggled to smile. Much of the British ...”

“... published in March under the headline ‘The Threat of Saddam’. It announced that ‘the Kurds may have evidence’ of Saddam’s ‘ties to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network’. The main link was Shahab. Hawks in Washington are keen to find such links. The joint FBI and CIA investigation into a report by Czech Intelligence that Mohammed Atta met an ...”

“... junior members of the Bar, ever sycophantic in their quest for advancement. Though the Telegraph may have been seeking to protect the innocence of its readers, there is nothing unusual in an ageing QC using his money and position to gain young admirers; nor about a gap between perceptions of the public and the private man. Yet, despite the excesses to which ...”

“... from his loft on Lower Broadway.’ ‘It doesn’t take courage. It takes cash.’ Sophie may be unsentimental about money, but for days she has been feeding a stray cat; not taking it into the house (Otto wouldn’t allow that: ‘They’re not pussycats, you know. They’re thugs’), just setting out a bowl of milk. When Otto accuses her of ...”

“... of the Florentine tradition. Brought to Italy by Antonello da Messina, the secret technique may influence Leonardo and Giorgione. 6) Circa 1600, Caravaggio, in mid-career, gets hold of a new large lens, which permits transmission of a much broader image. His subsequent ‘cinematic’ approach to figure composition is based on the projections so ...”

“... godhead. Often, the searchers will carry props with them and carry out recognition tests: the boys may be shown a collection of artefacts, some of which belonged to the previous bodhisattva, and asked to pick from them. Candidates may also be marked out by physical signs, such as abnormally long earlobes – a Tibetan ...”

“... precocious, feisty, and a New Yorker; her younger brother, Bird, is very Jewish – he thinks he may be the Messiah – and appears to be autistic (he is the kind of boy who tells us that he spent exactly 23 minutes on the lavatory). Alma’s adored Israeli father died when she was six; her mother, who is English, has withdrawn into her grief. Alma’s ...”

“... brother-in-law Felipe IV to mark the solemn occasion. It’s an indication that Felipe at least may have believed the marriage would happen. But Charles had learned a trick or two in Spain. Once he was safely on his way, he coolly countermanded the orders for his proxy marriage, telling Bristol not to go ahead until he was assured that the infanta would not ...”

“... the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. Given that the US was a latecomer to the European culture wars, it may not be surprising that the notorious American-run Congress for Cultural Freedom mimicked the structure and secretive make-up of a Communist front organisation. The US may have had the bomb first, but in 1945 the Soviets ...”

“... by Isaac Newton (‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants’). This may well be true, but it hardly explains Merton’s reluctance to publish an earlier manuscript in the same vein. In 2002, the unrevised manuscript finally made it into print, but in an Italian translation; the English original appeared only in 2004, posthumously ...”

“... and colour the composer of My Fair Lady might well have selected for his biography. Although one may suspect that two specifications worked out at a mid-Atlantic marketing conference have been accidentally switched, the American and the British designs reflect, in their sharp differences of character and aim, the problem central to any consideration of ...”

“... that below a certain threshold of skilled competence a dedication to the artist as amateur may issue only in the slovenly and amateurish, and above such a threshold a dedication to the artist as professional may issue only in the facile and professionalised. But why does it follow that ateliers are the answer, or ...”

“... that their spouses will be in the grip of a powerful obsession which they cannot share and which may drive these spouses to their laboratories even on Christmas morning. The passage reminded me of Odile Crick’s complaints about her husband’s prolonged periods of in explicable broodiness. On the question of racism, Medawar reflects on the remarkable ...”