“... back yard. But unlike This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching is stuffed with life. They may be experiencing a common phenomenon – the mid-life crisis – but the Weisses respond with drastic action, like a cat fighting its way out of a paper bag. Paul gets a tattoo, vomits a ‘pink, chunky mess’ of baby shrimp onto the street, shaves off all ...”

“... courage and political success – but it is usually difficult to pin them down, and there may also be unfounded fears that medicine murderers are abroad. Two generalisations are nevertheless well established. First, accusations of witchcraft target the poor, the odd and the weak, while it is the rich and powerful who are suspected of medicine ...”

“... only in textbooks. Among the most distinctive voices is that of Marcabru, a lower-class poet who may have invented the pastorela genre. His shepherdess sees right through the suasions of her courtly wooer: ‘Sir, a man whose brain’s gone balmy Swears great oaths, but he’s still crazy; Why make vows and try to praise me? Master,’ said this peasant ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... seems mere stylistic dither and does not touch her essential seriousness. Though her reader may flip ahead, may put down the book and forget where she left off, may allow herself to stray from attention, for Dillard herself the particulars of the world require witness. As a ...”

“... she muses later. ‘It is a subject that insensibly forces itself upon my notice.’ All this may have been a nod to the Gothic tastes of a British readership, but it also echoed a widely-held perception of Bengal as a disease-ridden place where death struck quickly and too soon. The other danger that Sophia skirts lies in an equally common fate for ...”

“... of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority. The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international ...”

“... emperor Cyrus the Great with Donald Trump. Both are vessels for God’s plan on earth. This may seem surprising: Trump is no more obviously Christian than Cyrus, who died half a millennium before Christ was born, and neither would score highly on a morality test. But, it turns out, the leakier the vessel, the greater the god. Evangelicals find Cyrus in ...”

“... for angling as ‘idle time not idly spent’ and his dictum that ‘he would rather live five May months than forty Decembers.’Carol Chillington Rutter’s Lying Abroad opens with an aqueous image. Staring ‘down into the waters of a Venetian canal’, the author imagines a watery Wotton floating among forgotten ignoti: ‘faces from the past who want ...”

“... nationalism, civilisationism is not principally concerned with political self-determination: one may want, as many Eastern European nationalists do, to defend political statehood within the framework of European liberal civilisation. The inverse is trickier. In theory, a civilisation may incorporate many independent ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... are smiling waitresses, not seen-it-all barkeeps; its anonymous New York voices say ‘yes-how-may-I help-you?’ not ‘how you doin’?’; its background noise is the hiss of espresso machines. If you don’t catch a ride to the Hamptons with your father-in-law in his chopper you must endure the discomforts of the Hampton Jitney. The novel’s frequent ...”

“... a youngish English archaeologist, digging in Mesopotamia in the spring of 1914, thinks he may have discovered evidence that would definitively resolve a number of uncertainties in the history of the late Assyrian Empire. Since those uncertainties are still unresolved more than 90 years later – no one knows whether or not King Sinsharishkun survived ...”

“... consolation from Cowen’s troubles: he had been barely a month in the job. Whatever hopes Ahern may have cherished that his self-sacrifice would be rewarded with a plum EU position disappeared. The Lisbon vote revealed a striking distrust of the main political parties, which despite holding more than 90 per cent of seats in the Dáil were unable to muster a ...”

“... among the hundreds of functionaries – more famous than the others, admittedly, though his clerk may exaggerate his fame – who work at and for the Agency, the only force of law and order in the city. What’s more, as often as not he solves his cases incorrectly. Sivart does at least talk like a textbook hard-boiled detective – or rather he writes like ...”