“... The bonobo is the best living example we have of a gynae-cocentric primate world. Gynaecocracy may not, however, be an idyllic affair. Rich spoke of ‘empowering joy’ between women, but Angier is more cautious. Bonobos ‘fight, and they’re hierarchical and greedy, and they can be murderous towards each other’. A whole chapter of Woman: An Intimate ...”

“... a less anxious president, to revoke the order in April 1953. In Hollywood the fear began on 8 May 1947, when the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by its chairman, Parnell Thomas, and its chief investigator, Robert Stripling, ‘set up shop’ at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The first response by the industry to notice of an investigation ...”

“... professional treatment. Whatever his feelings for his wife by this point – some commentators may have come to firmer conclusions than the evidence warrants – worry and guilt were substantial elements in the mix. And then there were the uncertainties arising from his irregular relations with the Muse. He had written practically no verse between mid-1915 ...”

“... of water that hit the town, according to a map published in the Asahi Shimbun on the anniversary, may have been only about 22 metres high. I say ‘only’, but that’s a wall of water the height of a seven-storey building, and because of the narrowness of the valley and the steepness of its walls it ran far inland, scouring everything it touched, turning a ...”

“... mostly conducted in bracing seaside ozone. Talk of scooter-borne ‘vermin’ aside, the real fear may have had less to do with physical aggro and more to do with the difficulty of slotting Mod into any obvious class or subcult genealogy. (Even the word ‘subculture’ suggests soil, shadow, dirt; airless oubliettes; greasy rungs leading down into a Harry ...”

“... the belief that equality is worn away by accumulation and raw acquisition: a view that Hollande may have shared for a moment, but one that’s harder to take now than it was when Mitterrand left the Elysée in 1995. Growing inequality is one of the central preoccupations in Who is Charlie?, Emmanuel Todd’s short, polemical book about what is and isn’t ...”

“... ratios: go directly to the balance sheet, find the total equity and total assets, and divide. You may not find the exercise entirely reassuring.) Equity of less than – sometimes much less than – 5 per cent was in the case of many banks simply too little to allow them to absorb the losses incurred in the crisis. Between June 2007 and June 2009, the first ...”

“... healthcare in Britain should be funded that personal hypocrisy is not much of an issue. Tony Blair may not be able to bring himself to educate his children in the comprehensive system that has to suffice for most parents, but when it comes to health he is happy to take his chances with the NHS (knowing, of course, that he will be well looked ...”

“... probably because divorce in Italy didn’t become legal until 1970, by which time both parties may well have felt there was no point. The TV version of La Storia was broadcast in 1986 with Claudia Cardinale as Ida, and the exposure made the book, now with a less confrontational cover (a photo of a little boy), a bestseller a second time ...”

“... Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford agrees that ‘though they are world famous, they may disappoint modern readers. Some of them consist largely of complicated wordplay, and scarcely engage our feelings at all.’ Equally, he is enthusiastic about the things he loves: Donne, for instance, is celebrated as ‘the greatest English love poet’, and ...”

“... the aggressor? What might lead someone to seem passionately to covet what they most fear? We may be tempted to read the moment in Germany as the most cynical form of self-protection, but the later moment reminds us that the most inappropriate, seemingly irrational forms of behaviour can surface during a war. People can be calm when they should be ...”

“... mine in Anzin while researching for Germinal. Zola posed as an official to gain access, but there may be no mystery in getting people to talk. Taking an interest is all that’s needed.Price restricts the geographical and demographic reach of his narrative to the area around Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard), which runs north-south through ...”

“... insofar as it realises its absolute unity, then the pluralist is ‘willing to believe that there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance of reality may never get totally collected’. In short, in the pluralist’s view of things, all you ever have, or could want to have, is what James calls ‘the ...”

“... evacuation: the poet, he says, in the second ‘Lettre du voyant’, written to Paul Demeny in mid-May 1871, must drain ‘all the poisons within him and [keep] only their essences’. The radicalism he had in mind, moreover, was that of the voyou/voyant or wide-boy/seer. He was finished, says Rickword in a briskly undemocratic tone, with ‘the tawdry virtues ...”

“... that to have insight into oneself was a prerequisite for a patient in psychoanalysis. Achilles may not be able to see to the bottom of his own mind, but at least he’s trying to get an angle on it: he knows he’s got a problem he can’t solve himself and he can now take the step of asking someone else to help him look – and why not a disinterested ...”