“... to choose from. As we learn more about the microbiome and its contribution to health, it may come to be seen as an age of ...”

“... to be entered’, she said, a rich, immersive material.The Woven Child at the Hayward (until 15 May) is the first large-scale retrospective of Bourgeois’s textile works, made from the mid-1990s until her death in 2010. Her work with cloth is varied, prolific and innovative; many pieces offer new iterations of familiar Bourgeois themes ...”

“... Turks appear idle, reclining on ancient monuments seemingly unaware of their significance.’ That may be so – Chandler describes meetings with locals who think the ruins are an old castle – but it’s hard to divine Mustapha and the interpreter’s impressions of the surroundings from the painting alone, and they look watchful rather than relaxed.In ...”

“... that amounts to a ‘fundamental breach of [the president’s] oath of office’. The best hope may be that the whistleblowers multiply to such an extent that popular imbecility is no match for their accumulated weight and direction. A casualty of the erratic progress of the impeachment may turn out to be the candidacy of ...”

“... of Hercules and his infant son Telephos. The Labourer stands in front of an enthroned figure who may be the goddess Arcadia, or, perhaps more plausibly, the Lydian queen Omphale, who enslaved Hercules for three years. Her right hand shows four digits: forefinger against her right temple, second finger against her cheek, third and fourth fingers bent ...”

“... Poetry Book Society commendation for her first book, which reveal the baffled admiration, which may or may not be the same as praise, that her poetry provoked in a climate we think of as polarised between the sensible formalism of the Movement and Alvarez’s New Poetry, with its call to go beyond ‘the gentility ...”

“... misses his ‘scattershot stupidity’, and falls slightly back in love with Stephen. They may not have a baby to care for, but they have the titular Wallcreeper, the bird that caused the opening car accident. They pin bits of food to a pegboard on the wall so that the bird can eat while perching in the manner to which it is accustomed. Stephen names ...”

“... items in Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, an exhibition at the National Gallery (until 22 May) in which paintings by Eugène Delacroix mingle with others by artists he influenced. In factual terms, Delacroix presents us with a September evening in a country garden, in which the last light lingers on a basket piled deep with produce and on the roses ...”

“... of skinShe is left ‘holding water, feeling nothing’.The anaesthetised slice under water which may end it all is a Robertson signature moment. He often writes as though a poetic image itself has an anaesthetising effect. A poem gruesomely entitled ‘The Halving’ relates having open heart surgery, and ‘A&E’ describes a visit to Casualty afterwards ...”

“... accidents weren’t random. Murder victims – in London in 1665, there were just nine of them – may not have deserved to die, but their deaths weren’t seen as contrary to divine will. Discerning patterns in chaos is a human characteristic in any age: if these interpretations fit our needs they help us accept our fate. Accidents, according to Spence, are ...”

“... for a centrist candidate as well as one from the left: in the first round of elections on 27 May, Sergio Fajardo, a former academic, got 23.7 per cent of the vote, only just behind the 25 per cent which put Petro into the final round. Fajardo, like Petro, was an independent candidate representing a coalition movement. What will happen to the peace ...”

“... non-uniform motion (one of the irregularities of the divinely regular universe), the mechanism may have used a gear on a slotted arm within another gear, or a pin-and-slot device, or perhaps both. The mechanism is a product not just of Greek knowledge, but of Egyptian and Mesopotamian learning, and may have been destined ...”

“... with the Japanese-American family cannot all be Japanese-Americans. Indeed, part of the point may be to redress a kind of ignorance other than that of the historical events themselves, which, despite the publisher’s claim that Otsuka’s book explores ‘unfamiliar’ history, are well documented. Not only has there been extensive historical ...”

“... the room that ‘it’s about masturbation.’ It isn’t clear how literally she means this; she may be making a wry comment on her husband’s profession – the writing of novels could be seen as a self-indulgent and sterile occupation. Developing, if unconsciously, the metaphorical potential of the theme, another character, Jocelyn, says later that what ...”

“... family – the President’s wife and sons had been among his students. But Saad, like Falstaff, may have known his President too well and not well enough. When he publicly warned against the possibility of Mubarak grooming one of his sons to succeed him, he was arrested, as an object-lesson to other would-be activists. Mubarak perhaps did not so much ...”