“... von Reurmont, Gruppenfuhrer Nebe, OKW Chef Kgf and General Grosch.’ It’s hinted that Skizzen may be a little touchy about the fact that Hitler’s reputation is worse than Stalin’s. We’re told that Skizzen sometimes reads aloud ‘with relish’ the accounts of these and other ‘crimes’ (Nuremberg is implied but never explicitly mentioned), and ...”

“... during a demonstration against Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. He began this novel in May 2003. One of his two sons was already in the army, doing the three-year military service compulsory in Israel, while his younger son, Uri, was awaiting his call-up papers. Against this background of fears for his country and for his children, Grossman set out ...”

“... premium bullshit can transcend itself through its own performativity. For example, an utterance may create – or destroy – the credence that forms its own truth condition, as when politicians dispense reassurance to the markets in the hope that what they say will be self-verifying. Creating confidence while ostensibly reporting it is a kind of ...”

“... fallen ill, perhaps with the sweating-sickness. She recovered, but on 2 April 1502, Arthur, who may already have been suffering from tuberculosis, succumbed to the illness and died. The death of Prince Arthur provoked consternation both in London and Granada. Though England still had an heir to the throne in the ten-year-old Prince Henry, the ...”

“... 1979; he returns so badly beaten that he’s almost unrecognisable. There’s a suspicion that he may have betrayed, under torture, a close friend, whose televised hanging takes place in the National Basketball Stadium in front of a large crowd. At the very least he’s guilty of recklessness, for harbouring opinions and literature hostile to the Gaddafi ...”

“... it seems positively old-boyish, to say: ‘William James must have been quite a handful.’ And it may be that James’s justification of vivisection on the grounds that ‘a heroic dog’ would gladly make the sacrifice if he understood the excellence of the cause does a little more than make ‘a modern reader . . . uncomfortable’. To me it seems ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of Eliot’s reputation. Ploughing through these packed and not always fascinating columns may tell us as much about the craft, if that is the right word, of highbrow reviewing as it does about Eliot. On the English side one notices a steady reduction in pomposity, signalled by the disappearance of the reviewer’s plural first-person pronoun – a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... at all on his soul). They are set in what the publisher calls classic Updike territory, which may or may not be a region you want to revisit. If Updike’s earlier work was consumed with wife-swapping, his late work is consumed by nostalgia for it. In the majority of the stories, a man, now in his sixties and sheltering ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of the old Nixon buddy, ‘Bebe Rebozos’. The fantasy that class division no longer exists may be the ultimate commodity on sale at the Megastore, and it is often served up as a contemporary revision of the foundational myth of the United States – that no such division existed in the first place. There are other magical resolutions on offer in Nobrow ...”

“... 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 ...”