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“... you come across in Tate Modern’s vast and various exhibition Performing for the Camera (until 12 June) is Yves Klein’s arresting and now iconic Leap into the Void (1960). It’s the jumping-off point for the whole show and it features the artist himself, well, jumping off. He’s throwing himself from a building in a suburban Paris street and is captured ...”

“... 2009 to 2014, the number of cases referred to the Portman NHS Trust’s Gender Identity Service rose from 97 to 697. Transgender children in the UK today have the option of delaying puberty by taking hormone blockers; they can take cross-sex hormones from 16 and opt for sex reassignment surgery from the age of 18. Cassie Wilson’s daughter Melanie ...”

“... of Eton in 1965 after he ceased to be prime minister. He continually referred to the Fourth of June, often to people who had no idea that this was the school’s great festival, or to those who pretended not to, like the Harrovian Field Marshal Alexander. There was something strangely fake about his snobbish carry-on, almost as though he was trying to ...”

“... taxation in Britain after 1688.’ Between the Glorious Revolution and Waterloo, Britain’s GNP rose threefold, but tax receipts rose fifteenfold. And it was the navy which, for most of that period, was the largest single consumer of public revenue. Not many people thought this odd. By now, it was accepted that British ...”

“... Many of the journalists and activists I knew when I lived in Haiti ten years ago have fled. Since June, violence has displaced more than fourteen thousand people in Port-au-Prince. The week before Moïse’s assassination, fifteen civilians were gunned down by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. The victims included the activist Antoinette Duclair and the ...”

“... of service opens with a suicide note. ‘The purpose of this note,’ which Koestler signed in June 1982, ‘is to make it unmistakeably clear that I intend to commit suicide by taking an overdose of drugs without the knowledge or aid of any other person. The drugs have been legally obtained and hoarded over a considerable period.’ Koestler went on to ...”

“... village of Le Moustier, on the road from Les Eyzies to Montignac, on 11 September 1910, to Alice Rose Champerret and Gaston Yves Champerret. But there was nothing more. David Martin put me in touch with Isabelle Dupois, who had worked as a housemaid at the château where the crate had been found. She told me that Champerret had been living in Paris when the ...”

“... of rapes recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on which their attention was focused, rose in the following year and hasn’t significantly decreased since. It is just one facet of this ugly reality – one more thing to contend with – that while attention to violence against women may be sparked by anger and a desire for redress, it might also ...”

“... was born in 1942 in Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, enlisted in the Defence Forces at the age of 17 and rose to command the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, the equivalent of the SAS. As a commando leader he displayed originality and creativity as well as physical courage, planning and carrying out special operations, including assassinations and ...”

“... Khrushchev in the 1950s was almost equally spectacular: he took part in the arrest of Beria in June 1953; actively supported both de-Stalinisation and the Hungarian invasion as defence minister in 1956; and in 1957 rescued Khrushchev from the challenge of the Anti-Party Group. At the Geneva summit in 1955, he made the cover of Time, pictured with an air of ...”

“... panics, fears and divisions. They were present, of course, and must be given their due. In May and June it was touch and go whether the façade of national unity would be preserved. Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, favoured negotiations with Hitler and quarrelled with Churchill over the issue. A resignation by the ‘Holy Fox’ at this critical juncture would ...”

“... was no direct water supply to the last house on Back Street Place.Rebecca wanted her daughter Rose to have a different life and sent her to Cardiff to apprentice to a tailor. In 1886, at the age of nineteen, Rose married Henry Williams, a 37-year-old upholsterer, and soon afterwards gave birth to a ...”

“... 14 February. A courier, a good-looking dark-haired boy, comes this Valentine’s Day with a single rose for someone next door. Having rung the bell, he waits with his rose and clipboard: today’s Rosenkavalier needs a signature. Huge crowds at the Abbey for the unveiling of the Oscar Wilde window, both transepts full with ...”

“... billion in military aid for Israel. The oil embargo went into effect the next day. Prices rose, with long queues forming at petrol stations throughout the US and Europe. Pressure mounted to end the war before Western economies collapsed.In October 1973, Martin Indyk and I were both living in the Middle East. We were young expatriates doing graduate ...”

“... risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he ...”