“... and she went in search of him. At a pub near Avondale Square she met a friend of Ronnie’s called David. He said he’d been with Ronnie the day before and that Ronnie was in bed the last time he saw him. (The coroner would later describe this man as an ‘unsavoury witness’ without detailing why.) Mrs Pinn, in company with another boy from the bar, went to ...”

“... Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (as paraphrased by Brian Stone): ‘Only Newton’s laws of motion may enjoy a wider scientific consensus than a human-enhanced greenhouse effect.’ There isn’t consensus, however, either scientific or political, about the best ways to respond to the problem; in part because so many possible avenues of research ...”

“... while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon. Halliburton’s chairman, David Lesar, who took over from Dick Cheney in July 2000, robustly defended his firm. But Waxman raised another question: if Halliburton was being allowed to rip off the Iraqi people, was the Bush administration allowing it to milk the US government as ...”

“... by refusing to take out cover was itself a gamble in which he wagered his faith against the laws of his host country. Perhaps, if he’d still been around, he’d have joined the first British sharia-compliant car insurance scheme, Salaam Halal Insurance, when it was launched last summer (call centres handle inquiries ‘in ...”

“... to see him climbing onto a neighbouring rooftop with an AR-15.* A person familiar with local gun laws told me it wasn’t unusual to see people at Trump rallies or in adjacent car parks and towns carrying rifles. ‘Crooks hadn’t actually done anything illegal,’ he said, ‘until he climbed up on that roof.’I couldn’t help but see all of this as the ...”

“... her album Butterfly, encouraging her to ditch the showtunes for covers of Bill Withers and David Bowie. He wanted to bring out Streisand’s ‘sexy side’: he told a journalist she had been playing ‘Ray Stark’s mother-in-law’ for too long.Streisand and Peters stayed together for eight years. He sold his salon and made a move on Hollywood, using ...”

“... of white women.’Black feminists weren’t the only ones to take offence. In 1986 the novelist David Bradley confessed that the first time he read Native Son,I shed no tears for Bigger. I wanted him dead; by legal means if possible, by lynching if necessary … I did not see Bigger Thomas as a symbol of any kind of black man. To me he was a sociopath, pure ...”

“... Wilde himself was standing trial. How somebody as worldly and bright as Wilde, so alert to the laws of the ruling class and at the receiving end of so much advice and so vulnerable to blackmail and so broke, could have been led so easily towards his downfall remains a mystery. But there are crucial aspects of his make-up and background, especially in the ...”

“... of the land and spoke to the people working on it. He addressed groups of farmers on the Corn Laws, taxes, placemen, money for agricultural paupers, and the general need for reform.In one of his columns he describes meeting a man coming home from the fields. ‘I asked him how he got on,’ he writes. ‘He said, very badly. I asked him what was the cause ...”

“... pointed out how ‘the composition of the citizens, properly so called, is to be gathered from the laws and customs of each state ... When I use the word people I mean the citizens who are so called in a more eminent sense, ’those who by direct consent and agreement entered into with the sovereign himself originally instituted the state’ and ‘not all ...”

“... to do a degree in, say, German, no matter how much a university brings its price down, then the laws of the market dictate that that degree should not be offered. What can ‘undesirable reductions in the scale of provision’ mean in a market system? At one point the White Paper concedes that Hefce should ensure ‘a healthy mix of subjects’. Indeed it ...”

“... computations have too. But chips had become so small that they were starting to run up against the laws of physics.Parallel processing instead performs calculations not in sequence, but simultaneously. Rather than working through one huge calculation, it works through lots of small calculations at the same time. On YouTube, you can find the MythBusters, an ...”

“... is unprecedented in its speed and daring and in the lightness of casualties.’ I heard Colonel David Hackworth say: ‘Hey diddle diddle, it’s straight up the middle!’ I heard the Pentagon spokesman say that 95 per cent of the Iraqi casualties were ‘military-age males’. I heard an official from the Red Crescent say: ‘On one stretch of highway ...”

“... the fatal tendency of the Conservative governments to which Britain has been subjected since 2010. David Cameron’s declaration in January 2013 that, if the Conservatives won the next election, they would offer a referendum on membership of the EU – which wasn’t a significant concern, never mind a priority, for British voters – is a fine ...”

“... do like reading other women, and seeing them properly recognised for their work.But it’s also, David Runciman reckons on his Talking Politics podcast, to do with the eventfulness of Arendt’s life, which is why Ken Krimstein’s comic-book biography of 2018 is structured around our heroine’s ‘Three Escapes’. Arendt did not arrive in the US until ...”