“... sways with grief ‘like a stalk of grass in the wind’ and ends by saying: ‘Oh, we writers may think we invent too much – but reality is worse every time!’ He’s not saying that invention is superfluous, just that there is no upper limit of grotesqueness to what happens every day. It isn’t unusual that a writer should be drawn to another ...”

“... of Picasso’s Party Line question that matters, but rather the suspicion that Matisse’s answer may be, though he hardly knows it, the whole truth. Decoration without somewhere to decorate – applied art without a realm of pleasure or praxis to apply to – such is modernism’s ‘Why not?’ The problem that follows for the critic is not to decide ...”

“... of better governance in some areas. Jonathan’s supporters claim that if he wins a second term he may be able finally to tackle the long-standing corruption and political sclerosis that has damaged the country – the legacy of imperialism, dictatorship and the fight for the spoils of oil. But for all the talk of a booming middle class, and a surge in ...”

“... important point, however, she suggests rather than exhausts the Tahitian side of the story, and may not do justice to the implications of the new globalisation of commodities, of which the breadfruit mission was a part. The 18th-century romanticisation of Polynesia as another Eden, all luscious fruit and naked Eves, was not just an abstraction, but also a ...”

“... to stretch up to thee, nor hands to join before thee; my feet are cut off and my knees, so that I may not bow them to thee.’ How can we explain this carnival of cruelty? Theologically, the saints were of course imitating Christ, who saved the world by his suffering, so martyrdom in the primitive Church was prima facie evidence of sanctity. It was also one ...”

“... I am’. He nonetheless believed that ‘the artistic type relative to the systematising type may have a more vigorous innervation of the cortex, rather more volume in the arteries, a richer or more easily oxygenated blood supply.’ In short, much of our nature is determined by our plumbing. There is no one so deceived as the person who believes that he ...”

“... the reason oligarchies fail in the end: the public tires of being treated in this way. Democracy may well be bubbling up in Russia in ways that the elite will eventually be unable to control. But until they lose control, there is no doubt about who is in charge. If Britain is turning into an oligarchy, as Ferdinand Mount claims, then it’s nothing like the ...”

“... of Theidon’s book is that the movement’s ideology is never properly analysed, although it may be that there’s not a lot to analyse. What she says about its provenance is revealing, however. It took root in institutions in Ayacucho, including a secondary school in the ancient Inca administrative centre of Vilcashuamán and San Cristóbal National ...”

“... small attacks, but the local population was, Ludewig suggests, mostly quiet – an attitude that may well have been prompted by the massacre of villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane by Waffen-SS soldiers a few weeks before. Model, on the other hand, had to watch German forces squeeze along the few remaining roads near Falaise, abandoning most of their equipment ...”

“... empires – Russia past, US present and China future – will be purely economic. Political Islam may be a threat, but jihadi militance is likely to pose more of a problem for the local regimes than for the three outside powers. Indeed, the potential threat from political Islam is more likely to lead to co-operation than conflict among the big three since ...”

“... the book itself is never far from cuteness – more Adrian Mole than Ivan Denisovich – which may explain the endorsements of Room provided by sentimental popular novelists like Anita Shreve and Audrey Niffenegger. Where is Mark Haddon’s imprimatur? And of course, a novel narrated by a five-year-old kid stretches to breaking point the already uneasy ...”

“... named her whole project after it, and gave a fine example of what she means by it and how it may be arrived at when The Happiness Project went straight to the top ten in the US bestseller list:* ‘I’m in shock. I just found out. My book, The Happiness Project, hit #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, its first week out in the world. This is one ...”

“... student will one day explain why. Perhaps it has to do with a certain English stiffness, which may be one reason it is rare in the United States. The English don’t like being on first-name terms with strangers, which is what authors and readers generally are to each other. It may also have to do with the doctrine of ...”

“... killers are deviant, while sunlight, death, panic and arthritis are natural. Whatever else they may be, human beings are natural material objects. Normality and convention can be on the side of enlightenment: if being allowed to go on strike isn’t normal, it ought to be; convention dictates that you shouldn’t kick vagrants who ask you for ...”

“... while the BP oil spill, and the subsequent poisoning of Gulf waters with dispersant chemicals, may surpass Katrina in both economic damage and loss of human life. Disaster is part of the character of the city: not just the trauma of past cataclysms, but the fear of what will come next, and how soon. In New Orleans’s first hundred years, the period ...”