“... not seen posed elsewhere: why did not one Tory MP abstain from the vote of confidence in Theresa May? The whole process felt a little uncanny. The poll was triggered in secret one night and fully concluded by the next. Turnout was a Stalinist 100 per cent – a figure only achieved by allowing two MPs who had lost the whip over allegations of sexual ...”

“... the use of such words as ‘slaves’ or ‘castes’ in describing colonies of ants, because it may imply that if these practices are natural to them they are legitimate also for us. The biologist thinks that both the similarities and the differences are so obvious that it is convenient to use the words and ‘unnecessary to drag in all the possible ...”

“... large body parts without a clear functional purpose (like a peacock’s tail), but the tusk may have its uses: recent drone footage appears to show narwhals stunning fish with a quick sabre-rap. Alternatively, some scientists have suggested that, being stuffed with nerve bundles, the tusk may sense changes in water ...”

“... to linguistics is by no means the same thing as an introduction to the study of language. This may come as a surprise to those laymen who have always assumed that ‘linguistics’ is just the official academic name for the academic study of language. They would thus interpret the title of Professor Lyons’s book as being for all practical purposes ...”

“... historians of the modern period, as well as others, would do well to take ritual seriously. They may discover that its role hasn’t changed as much as one would think it had, despite the disappearance, at any rate in the industrialised world, of ‘traditional’ societies. ‘Traditional societies’, though, is much too vague. There are important ...”

“... bypass the boycott, tipping universities into a state of dysfunction. Some final-year students may not graduate this summer; others will ‘graduate’ without their assessments being marked, or even read – including capstone assessments such as dissertations. If marks don’t matter, what is an examination system for? What does a degree mean? At the ...”

“... makes it almost impossible to combine accuracy and accessibility. The technicalities of philosophy may not be as great as those of science, but they are enough to put much of what is written beyond the reach of most people. Even etnics, which touches our lives more closely than any other branch of philosophy, is now developing formidable intricacies, and in ...”

“... But in any case the spread of nuclear knowledge will continue inexorably. Furthermore, it may be that some states will feel less confidence in the nuclear guarantees given to them by the super-powers, and thus that they have to have their own nuclear weapons, if détente becomes firmer. Mitchell Reiss’s thoughtful analysis of the political and ...”

“... drawing’. In 1867 Robinson tried in vain to sell an important El Greco to the gallery. In May 1895, not long after Layard died, he offered the Expulsion of the Traders from the Temple, justly observing to the new director, Sir Edward Poynter, that ‘it is very much above the average of this most eccentric master’s works and has the advantage of ...”

“... jus in bello, also known as ‘international humanitarian law’, limiting the way belligerents may behave once a conflict has begun. The 1945 UN Charter prohibits the use or threat of force against the ‘territorial integrity or political independence’ of nation-states. The right of self-defence constitutes an exception to this general prohibition ...”

“... with the present public image of the literary. The problems of Tom and Viv are more obvious, and may be dealt with more rapidly. They start from the fact that drama is an art of embodiment, and always highlights any errors of thinking by objectifying them. One such was revealed the moment Hastings’s curtain went up on a tea-party in the garden of Viv’s ...”

“... of books or of reality, better in the sense of ‘truer’, more accurate and more revealing: and may well be helped to be so by being rid of the illusion that as ‘scholars’ they have some easy, advantaged road to the truth.This myth of scholarship seems extra liable to crop up where the lives of poets are concerned, and not necessarily because (or not ...”

“... as looking like Hamlet’s aunt, and this must have made sense to most of his readers). We may therefore conclude that this is our culture’s leading night out: even in an electronic age, one of the best shows going. But it’s worth recalling that the word ‘show’ took on precisely this usage only late in the 19th century. When Shakespeare says of ...”

“... walk. When we want to turn back the clock we are not giving up on time. Turning back, in short, may involve reconsideration; giving up suggests abandonment (and if we really give up there is no turning back). Both are reversals of a kind, expressions of doubt about progress and desire, or at least about direction and purpose. So it is essentially an anxiety ...”

“... the Coastal Path at the close of a hard winter. Amateur geologists, rockhounds, and collectors may be distinguished by commitments to task-specific outerwear, but a bin bag rain poncho is not the measure of a person. Ideas gather around phenomena as though for warmth. Between art and science, our method is the stage upon which the universal plays in the ...”