“... that provide clues and proceed, with varying degrees of caution, to do some invention. The story may then become so complicated that even reasonably sober academic biographers have to alter the whole shape of the early career to accommodate their guesses. When the fiction is provided by someone whose business is precisely the writing of fiction the invention ...”

“... and Middlesex. Mercia was, Adams claims, ‘the crucible of the English state’. The West Saxons may have promoted their version of the national story more successfully, but it is salutary to remember that if things had gone differently, the capital of England might be Tamworth (which has a population today of about eighty thousand), with its senior ...”

“... life, and this seems correct. They provide the most sustained theme in his variegated career, and may be seen as a point of convergence for most of the tendencies of his mind. To consider the computers is to consider Babbage. Indeed his story falls under a triple rubric that belongs to computers from Babbage onwards: software, hardware, and applications. The ...”

“... deserve it. It doesn’t seem wrong to call W.B. Yeats a great poet, and in certain contexts he may be called a great Irish poet, though most of the time it might seem odd to insist that Dante was a great Italian, or Shakespeare a great English, poet, partly because we vaguely think of them as transcending nationality. But Yeats was the necessary great poet ...”

“... consideration came the reply: ‘the outstanding mediocrity in the Party’. Trotsky’s contempt may in part be explained by the wounds which his own pride had suffered from the growth of Stalin’s influence among the party rank and file after Lenin’s death in January 1924. On the other hand, not even Stalin’s closest allies considered intellect and ...”

“... Germany. But rugby, with its reliance on physical attributes, has no such capacity to shock. Japan may shore up their side with the odd Tongan or Fijian but they will never compete on equal terms with the All Blacks; the Ivory Coast would probably struggle to beat an Australian side with their legs tied together. Nevertheless, when two teams are of roughly ...”

“... end of the century, in an 1892 translation of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia sexualis. It was in May of that year that Oscar Wilde received a ‘very pathetic’ letter from Lord Alfred Douglas, of whom he had hitherto been no more than a casual acquaintance, appealing to him for help with regard to a rentboy who was threatening blackmail, and inaugurating ...”

“... there is, he finds, a ‘mood of optimism’ taking hold of Sierra Leone: an end to the conflict may even be in sight. Confirming this forecast, a peace accord was signed on 30 December last year between the President of the country and the RUF leader, and the five-year-old war was ended. If this accord continues to hold, as at present, it will be because ...”

“... make guesses about the causes of burps, rumbles, farts, sweats, swellings, flushes and rashes. We may even get a glance, by way of a nasty accident, at a bit of bone. But in other ways we know our insides hardly at all. We are vague about what they look like. Even when we have the words – spleen, kidney and so forth – the associated pictures are often ...”

“... This is a rather relaxed book. As such, it may disappoint those who know the author through his brilliant contributions to early Stuart history, or his recent principled interventions in debate in the House of Lords. Its aim, a truly ambitious one, is to trace the continuities between the liberalism of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and that of Liberal Democratic politics today ...”

“... the Turkish army across the frontier. If another PKK attack of similar magnitude takes place, he may be compelled to act. The PKK headquarters are in the Kandil mountains, which run along the Iraqi side of the border with Iran. They form one of the world’s great natural fortresses. The mountains, which will soon be covered in snow, are broken by deep ...”

“... myth had been reinforced or even initiated by porphyria. Skin conditions such as hypertrichosis may cause hair to grow over the face and hands, but have no psychiatric manifestations. Rabies in humans may induce an agitated, furious state of mind with biting and hallucinations, but without skin changes. Illis pointed out ...”

“... once a month her characters acquire sexual characteristics, but at random – an individual may be male one month and female the next. Why do we have sex at all? There is so much of it about, and we take it so much for granted, that only a child, or an evolutionary biologist, would think of asking the question. And it turns out that sex is a very big ...”

“... states – Yugoslavia, East Germany, the Soviet Union – are unable to survive its coming. This may be the year in which we see whether South Africa is one of those that can. With the launching of Codesa – the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, whose first plenary session was held on 20-21 December – the march towards a democratic, non-racial ...”

“... would not occur to most viewers today, yet there was a streak of lewdness in Rembrandt which may make us hesitate to reject it. Velásquez’s woman may not be a goddess, but she is nude, not naked. Her pose is irreconcilable with the efficient performance of the act in question and her grace is hardly compatible with ...”