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“... was endlessly imminent through the winter and spring of 1944 – or packed off to work in Germany. More than 600,000 Italian soldiers and prisoners became internees of the Reich. Or they were shot: on 24 March 1944, 335 Romans were killed in a catacomb south of the city as a reprisal for the death of 33 German soldiers attacked by the resistance close to the ...”

“... attention to a remarkable paradox: that at a time when medical knowledge is greater and technology more powerful than ever before, medicine is assailed by doubts about its role and purpose. Some reasons for the doubts are clear enough: uncertainty about the respective responsibilities of public and private agencies for the finance and administration of health ...”

“... Neither Vidal nor Howard Auster, his long-standing companion, swam in the pool, which was even more impressively blue than the sea at the foot of the cliff. Sunshine, cypresses, cicadas, scented air, the physical drama: all the sense-heightening Mediterranean stuff. Kurt Vonnegut, a house guest, had disappeared: his photographer wife, Jill ...”

“... Thomas Becket​ was not the first archbishop of Canterbury to meet a violent end – Archbishop Alphege was killed by Vikings in 1012 – but he was unique in other ways. Unlike his predecessors, he was not particularly learned and wrote nothing except letters (the 12th-century equivalent of texting), of which 189 survive ...”

“... in Continental Europe during the Second World War and the years leading up to it. His heroes are more likely to be journalists, film producers or novelists than professional spies or rugged military types, though the protagonist of Dark Voyage (2004) is a fairly rugged merchant seaman. The hero of The Polish Officer (1995) is, as the title hints, an officer ...”

“... one might add, for subsequent promotion (to professor, endowed chair, or president of the MLA) more full-length books will be required. Under this regime the academic profession (Humanities Branch, Literature Subdivision) has become a monograph-producing industry. This, it would seem, is not something Greenblatt has a problem with in principle. Others ...”

“... The bicentennial of 2019 celebrated the arrival of the city-state’s ‘founding father’, Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, whose name graces countless schools and institutions, the famous hotel, and the world’s largest flower. ‘Without 1819, we may never have been launched on the path to nationhood as we know it today,’ the prime minister, Lee ...”

“... presents for the would-be popular biographer is evident in his entry in the Concise DNB: Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895), man of science; studied at Charing Cross Hospital; announced, 1845, discovery of the layer of cells in root sheath of hair which now bears his name; MB London, 1845; made assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake 1846-50, investigations ...”

“... the location of many of her books is still unknown: 235 volumes have been identified so far, but more are being found all the time, thanks mainly to Wolfreston’s annotations.*The four-act life story of Wolfreston’s books – accumulation, stasis, scattering, reconstruction – is typical of many libraries from the 17th century. David Pearson’s Book ...”

“... Furman’s conviction as invalid because it was ‘pregnant with discrimination’ and because, more generally, a sort of moral evolution had brought society to a point where the death penalty – like branding, torture and public whipping before it – was no longer to be regarded as civilised. Historically new standards made it ‘cruel and unusual’ and ...”

“... democratic state in the Gaza’ and open the door for democracy in the Middle East. The columnist Thomas Friedman was more explicit, arguing that ‘the issue for Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there – a Dubai on the ...”

“... is a Titanic Dinner Show. The smaller but still substantial artefact exhibitions are lucrative: more than 25 million people have paid ($32 for an adult and $24 for a child in Las Vegas, plus tax) for the opportunity to hear ‘countless stories of heroism and humanity that pay honour to the indomitable force of the human spirit in the face of ...”

“... In the early​ 1860s, Edgar Degas made a copy of Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Louisa Georgina Augusta Anne Murray. The original, now in Kenwood House, is thought to have been completed between 1824 and 1826 and shows the four-year-old goddaughter of the Duke of Wellington prancing before her audience like a 19th-century Shirley Temple ...”

“... for news of the allegedly infected pharmacist, but couldn’t find anything. There were three more cases in nearby villages, and the first death in Umbria was identified as Ivano Pescari, a 66-year-old accordion player from Città di Castello, ‘well known in the world of dance music’. Later that evening, the mayor announced that eight Orvietani had ...”

“... girth – 635 pages, cover to cover – and even vaster ambition, American Visions left me with more questions than answers. Indeed, its stated intention – ‘to look at America through the lens of its art’ – might arouse suspicion from the start. Surely, the idea that art offers an unmediated vision, as though through a transparent lens, of a whole ...”