“... successor, James I and VI, wanted to rule by proclamation; it was so in 2010 when Theresa May wanted to use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament; it was still so in 2017 when it was proposed that the UK leave the EU by ministerial fiat rather than parliamentary authority, and again in 2019 when Elizabeth II was required by Boris Johnson to ...”

“... and constant reinvention. Her use of Cuban government sources and official state data may deter some readers, as may her unabashed support for the Cuban model. But part of her argument is that, to a degree not really seen elsewhere, Cuban citizens are the state. For We Are Cuba! she interviewed government ...”

“... journals end up taking a lot on trust. Even diligent reviewing is inconsistent, since reviewers may disagree about a paper’s merits, and will have their own intellectual and social biases.In Science Fictions, Stuart Ritchie explores the problems with this system. The book is a useful account of ten years or more of debate, mostly in specialist ...”

“... In​ May, I gave up my academic career after 27 years. A voluntary severance scheme had been announced in December, and I dithered about it until the pandemic enforced focus on a fuzzy dilemma. Already far from the sunlit uplands, universities would now, it seemed, descend into a dark tunnel. I swallowed hard, expressed an interest, hesitated, and then declared my intention to leave ...”

“... various flattering things about my own work, albeit hinting in the politest possible terms that I may be a touch benighted.)In North’s view, ‘the origins of the discipline’ are to be found in the 1920s: he repeatedly asserts that it was I.A. Richards who ‘founded the discipline’. But Richards, according to North, did not develop practical criticism ...”

“... hankering’ that the writer owns to and the reader shares is nothing new, and while Flaubert may incorporate its consequences into his text with a greater degree of subtlety, Cooper’s novels weave it across a broader canvas and with a knowingness which generates an air of good-humoured tolerance in which to investigate one’s own feelings of ...”

“... in a constant struggle for survival, but had a leisurely lifestyle. Sahlins and his sources may have pushed the argument a little too far, neglecting to consider, for instance, the time spent preparing food (lots of mongongo nuts to crack). But their case was strong enough to deal a severe blow to the idea that farming was salvation for ...”

“... inflected antisemitism. In Vienna, the Rothschilds remained the ultimate insider-outsiders. Albert may have been ‘the richest man in Europe’, but it took two prime ministers and a foreign monarch to persuade Emperor Franz Joseph that he should be formally received at court. By this time, hate for the Rothschilds had infused the entire political ...”

“... asked. Murdoch just rolled his eyes. When it came to Maxwell’s business methods his response may have been justified, but his dismissiveness doesn’t do justice to a man who rose from a penury that Murdoch could never imagine. It was an ascent that relied on gargantuan self-confidence. Preston describes the way Maxwell conducted himself in ...”

“... as a work of fiction it is vanishingly slight.DeWitt’s first novel, The Last Samurai (2000), may at first sight seem to offer little scope for the exercise of the laconic. It falls squarely into the category of high-end doorstopper – the ‘encyclopedic’ novel – which includes such celebrated behemoths as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest ...”

“... Scottish Greens and to survive the fallout from Alex Salmond’s formation of a new party, Alba, may appear miraculous in retrospect. Now is the time of schism.I grew up in the Free Church of Scotland. I knew it as a community of urban Highlanders with Calvinist theology and socially conservative politics in which everyone knew everyone, not just at the ...”

“... Pirate tales were so appealing – and have proved so enduring – that Graeber thinks they may have constituted ‘the most important form of poetic expression produced by that emerging North Atlantic proletariat whose exploitation laid the ground for the industrial revolution’: a kind of anarcho-fabulous counter-literature which enthralled the ...”

“... complaint is one of the few physical facts recorded about him. There are no clear photographs. He may no longer even be alive. Nevertheless, according to the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, Guzman is ‘the object of religious devotion’ to his Senderista followers and of holy terror to Peru’s middle classes. Nicholas Shakespeare’s fascination with ...”

“... and this, in turn, leads to widespread paranoia, as each person maligns others who he thinks may be gossiping behind his back. Complementing chakari and flowing from it, but lying on a horizontal rather than vertical social axis, is the other main institution, afno manchhe. There is a strong distinction made between ‘us’, who are ...”

“... friends and kinsfolk, urging them to pray for her soul, her departed spirit. Such printed pieties may well seem sentimental to outsiders – rather like the halting rhymes we find in the ‘In Memoriam’ columns of newspapers. After reporting the death of this young mother, the birth of this child, Yourcenar embarks on a ‘tour of the chateaux’, the ...”