“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the Supreme Court in the Rwanda case hands down. In a unanimous ruling on 15 November, the court held that asylum seekers transferred to Rwanda faced a real risk of being wrongly returned to their countries of origin. The court could have said simply that there was no legal error in the Court of Appeal’s assessment of the evidence. But it chose to go ...”

“... of Arts in London, Angelica Kauffman (until 30 June) is the first solo show of her work to be held at her home institution. Kauffman’s neoclassical history paintings have long been unfashionable, and her images of mourning women, heads bowed over urns or red-rimmed eyes flung heavenwards, seem sentimental and melodramatic to modern tastes. Her ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Ireland were changing and the working class’s position weakening. Recent historical work such as David Howell’s treatment of Connolly in his A Lost Left (1986) has drawn attention to the defects in Connolly’s interpretation of the Gaelic past. Austen Morgan’s book represents the most incisive demonstration to date of the extent to which his ...”

“... of green grass and round tables? Five of the 12 essayists – Michael Dummett, P.F. Strawson, David Pears, D.M. Armstrong and Charles Taylor – are concerned with these or with closely related questions. Collectively – taken together with those earlier writings of Ayer on which these essays are a commentary and with Ayer’s reply at the end of this ...”

“... And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem’ – because he was of the house and lineage of David – ‘to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.’ The precise detail, it is often said, conveys that concern with ...”

“... wilderness, Pym’s novel Quartet in Autumn had at last been accepted for publication: Larkin and David Cecil had independently named her as their choice of ‘most undervalued writer’ in the 75th-anniversary number of the TLS. As Pym’s diary records, they had kipper pâté to start, after sherry; and then ‘veal done with peppers and tomatoes, Pommes ...”

“... Labour landslide year, that the first Nuffield election study appeared, with the hand of a young David Butler already apparent. It was, sadly, a jejune and disappointing volume which explains very little of the last great realigning election of modern times. Since then Butler has taken an increasingly dominant role in the enterprise and the books have ...”

“... In a speech​  at the University of East London in February 2010 David Cameron, then leader of the opposition, promised to lift the lid on ‘secret corporate lobbying’. The ‘far too cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money’, he said, would end on his watch. The full text of his speech isn’t easy to find – the Conservative Party erased ten years’ worth of speeches and press releases from its website in 2013 – but the internet doesn’t forget ...”