“... the children in them look vulnerable but also experienced, as children like that often do. She may simply have sensed where to look for that kind of energy. But it may also have been that her knowledge of social forces was greater than she was ready to admit. On a shelf in the St James Road studio, she had a book about ...”

“... Sajo said. ‘When it is safe, we will return to our land.’ But he’s afraid that safety may be a long way off. And after his generation dies, the next one may not be interested in land they have never set eyes on.Driving west, I recognised villages I had last seen fifteen years ago, their earth and stone houses ...”

“... is the domestic backdrop to the authoritarian actions that have become known to outsiders. ‘I may have caused some of our people to love our kingdom too much,’ MBS declared, weeks after Khashoggi’s murder.In the months before his murder, Khashoggi had become friends with Omar al-Zahrani, a young dissident living in Canada, who persuaded him to take a ...”

“... of English fiction. Writing for children has been among its most assured traditions, and it may have been Lively’s numerous books for young readers that first led her to brood on what we need to learn from families, and how that learning can go wrong. The most robust character in her patient new novel, Passing on, is a mother who is not there. Dorothy ...”

“... with the tumult of vegetation around them) produces a destabilising effect that Padiyar suggests may have been the cause for du Barry’s rejection of them.His theory meets its limit in the section on the 18th-century subject par excellence, the kiss, which ends in an analysis of The Bolt. Painted in the late 1770s for the Marquis de Véri, The Bolt was ...”

“... on the celebration of Russian nationality were weakening. A more dramatic change came in May 1945, when – for his toast at a victory banquet in the Kremlin – Stalin singled out ‘the Russian people’ as ‘the decisive force that ensured the historic victory’. In the conventional Western telling of Soviet history, this marked an important ...”

“... Germain), ‘Hélobeby’ and ‘OLRAITLEDY!’, which, Hussey writes, may be transliterations of the sounds with which American GIs greeted prostitutes. As in the long exclamation at the beginning of Finnegans Wake, language is broken up then stitched together, letters are made to feel like litter (to borrow Joyce’s pun) in your ...”

“... British institution which the Conservatives have (with much success) claimed to represent. It may be, of course, and not for the first time, that the NUR executive could still alienate those whose good will they need, but they do not seem to have done so thus far. And I would be surprised if many people even knew there was a dock strike. The Labour lead ...”

“... ministers have tried to show that the British public was right and Osborne was wrong. Theresa May, who loathed Osborne, dispatched him to the backbenches with the injunction to ‘get to know his party better’. Other senior Tories whom she also despised, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, were summoned back into the fold as cover for her ...”

“... Kurdish minority. Erdoğan is said to have wanted Turkey to intervene militarily in Syria since May last year, but until now he has been restrained by his army commanders. They argued that Turkey would be entering a highly complicated war in which it would be opposed by the US, Russia, Iran, the Syrian army, the PYD and IS while its only allies would be ...”

“... Sandhurst. A skeleton British military presence remained behind in the Gulf. In 2016, Theresa May pledged to increase Britain’s military commitments there, ‘with more British warships, aircraft and personnel deployed on operations than in any other part of the world’. In April last year, the Royal Navy reopened HMS Jufair in Bahrain – the base had ...”

“... Even his wife began to complain about his obsession. He was often seen with a prostitute. He may have developed neurosyphilis, but this remains unclear. The maddening effects of professional and social rejection can’t have helped his mental state. In the summer of 1865, he was committed to an asylum, where he was beaten by the guards. He died shortly ...”

“... in new worlds. The discovery of a few scattered and impoverished islands in the Atlantic may have aroused geographical curiosity throughout Europe, but it did nothing to increase either the wealth or power of Spain. They wanted what their Portuguese rivals had been looking for: a trade-route to the East, if possible a legitimate supply of slaves ...”

“... at the barracks refused to recognise the imperial nephew and stole the scene by shouting: ‘You may kill me, but I will do my duty!’ The would-be new Head of State, who was pointing his gun, accidentally shot one of the soldiers in the face. The invasion force panicked and decided to retreat. Louis-Napoléon was determined to march on the upper town and ...”

“... and firm that they looked artificial’, Valérie swings both ways. Every young boy’s dream. It may be the misjudged silliness of these later sex scenes that makes the racial discourse of Platform stand out. Certainly, through various characters, Houellebecq has a go at diverse national and religious targets. Americans appear to be beneath or beyond direct ...”