“... 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 ...”

“... secrecy of spying. The narrator has been with the WOOC(P) for several weeks, and risked his life more than once, but still hasn’t received any pay. The offices are on ‘one of those sleazy long streets in the district that would be Soho, if Soho had the strength to cross Oxford Street’. Though he had never been a spy, Deighton drew on his own ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... fruits, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, have so deep a resonance and are more closely associated with place, memory and longing.) As he was about to leave, an elderly man came down the large curving staircase. Stern struck up a conversation. His interlocutor turned out to be a former Polish cavalry officer who had survived ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of Henry VIII, on 31 December 1539. This is where Moorhouse starts, in a study of Durham that is more than just a study of Durham, and which is enriched by his usual stylish prose and eye for detail. The book would be a good place to begin if one wanted to understand the life of medieval English Benedictines and the brilliant bureaucratic and political ...”

“... and attorneys – one of whom was, no doubt, elected to public office during the year. What’s more, three will have died of cerebral-vascular or coronary difficulties, two of cancer, one each of vehicular mayhem, diabetes and domestic violence. The spare change will be by act of God or suicide – most likely the faith healer. The figure most often and ...”

“... accusations, Lucia decides to eat in the canteen with the Russians and Poles, to prove she’s ‘more democratic’ than the French and Italian women who’ve been taunting her. She doesn’t realise that the segregation is enforced by the Nazis. ‘Since you love them so much,’ the foreman tells her, ‘go work with them.’ Demoted from the thermometers ...”