“... defend their communities turned into licensed bandits and racketeers when they took power in rebel-held enclaves. It wasn’t that reporters were factually incorrect in their descriptions of what they had seen. But the very term ‘war reporter’, though not often used by journalists themselves, helps explain what went wrong. Leaving aside its macho ...”

“... that proliferate around Gödel’s theorem and its consequences. Incompleteness has been held to show, for example, that there cannot be a Theory of Everything, the so-called holy grail of modern physics. Some philosophers and mathematicians say it proves that minds can’t be modelled by machines, while others argue that they can be modelled but ...”

“... and creative literature (Murdoch) at the other. But the attempt to focus on books which are held to be culturally important and books which are merely adjuncts to practical activity is finally too much. What one ends up with is either so qualified as to be unusable, or so simplified as to embarrass the user. For instance: ‘readers to whom I have ...”

“... smile, the long slits of his eyes narrowed. The effect was not altogether pleasant; his smile held an element of menace. And, right there, precisely when the reader might be tempted to roll her eyes, is a photograph of Cousin Gilbert, the long slits of his eyes narrowed indeed, looking as little pleasant as Gordon said he would and, if one ...”

“... the right of East Africans of Asian descent to enter this country despite the fact that they held British passports, while a number of Conservative MPs had opposed the measure. And although most of the comparatively small number of people then actively concerned with racial issues held liberal or socialist views of ...”

“... most prominent female author of her day. In The Dunciad, she is the prize of a pissing competition held between talentless hacks:   Who best can send on high The salient spout, far-streaming to the sky; His be yon Juno of majestic size, With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes. As Kathryn King observes in the first full-length biography of Haywood for ...”

“... to make her way. Had she happened to show fear at the time of the earthquake, no one would have held it against her. To step foot in the Travellers Club as a non-male, on the other hand, was a gaffe that couldn’t be allowed to pass. She was ‘politely but firmly shown the door’. For anyone who came of age in Britain during and directly after the ...”

“... Veronese show now at the National Gallery (until 15 June) is the largest devoted to him since one held in Venice in 1939, and it is striking that of the forty pictures not from the gallery’s own collection, half were also displayed in that earlier exhibition, not because in every case they are of exceptional quality, but because their owners are prepared to ...”

“... on your Nellie!’ across a letter from Leslie offering to make an introduction.‘To those who held themselves up to be “serious UFO investigators”’, Eghigian writes, Adamski was ‘an outright embarrassment’. But his story has much in common with other, less blatantly bogus accounts. As Eghigian points out, aliens – whether or not they come in ...”

“... that despises them … I lived in the monster and know its entrails – and my sling is that of David.’ The next day he was killed by Spanish troops at the battle of Dos Ríos. For three more years the Cubans fought alone against the Spanish. Then, in April 1898, the United States entered the war against a now exhausted Spain, waving the flag of Cuba ...”

“... knew the Old Testament. Upavon’s chapel is called the Cave of Adullam, the stronghold where David sought refuge from Saul’s armies (1 Samuel), presumably as a reminder of the persecution suffered by dissenters; Little Zoar, near Calne, is evidence of the fortress mentality of those strict Calvinists among the Baptists who believed that only the Elect ...”

“... arrived in England; the fittings and fixtures in the flat seem strange and new to him: ‘the hand-held shower lay in a perfect coil of chrome, like an alien turd’; the knocked light-bulb wire is ‘flexing like a snake disturbed from its tree’. It’s unlikely if not impossible that Randeep would be more familiar with snakes than electric cables, but the ...”

“... often prohibitively expensive or otherwise inaccessible. (The Canadian Supreme Court has recently held such agreements to be ‘unconscionable’ and thus unenforceable.) He was instrumental in the undoing of laws restricting campaign finance and one of his last votes was cast to undermine unions.Justice Brett Kavanaugh took Kennedy’s seat after a ...”

“... Documenta,​ held every five years in Kassel, is the world’s most influential show of contemporary art. On 19 June, a day after the opening, an eight-metre-high banner titled People’s Justice, painted by the Indonesian art collective Taring Padi, was hung from a scaffold in Friedrichsplatz, Kassel’s central square ...”

“... and hair. The essay writers included biblical scholars, gentlemen naturalists and theorists who held that skin colour was explained by climate and environment. Contributions came from Sweden, Ireland and Holland as well as from France: this was a European conversation. Their arguments were theological, physical, humoral and anatomical. None challenged the ...”