“... with that logic-interrupting lunch in Bloomsbury: what stopped him in his tracks that day in May 1910 was the startling realisation that the performances of Old Masters such as Hogarth and Gainsborough, hanging in some dining-room in Coram’s Fields, were being outstripped in quality by those of his own contemporaries. Here among his fellows, a path to ...”

“... time of writing, and for a period thereafter. Diarists seem to like to fear that their disclosures may be chanced on by their most intimate companions: husbands, parents, wives – those people in their lives who think they know what’s really going on. Does this mean that diarists – like adulterers (and most diarists do seem to be adulterers) – are ...”

“... have been so alert to the medium’s cool tricking of the real and the abstract. Badlands may be the most serene film he ever made. A philosopher might have stopped then and there. But he was tickled by the idea of life as a moviemaker.His next film, Days of Heaven (1978), was more flagrantly beautiful and even more widely admired. It’s the story of ...”

“... in part to affirmative action programmes in the 1920s, and the numbers in the Gulag contingent may proportionally have been even higher. Many of them wrote memoirs, mainly between the late 1980s and early 2000s, in which they generally told their stories in terms of a heroic struggle to care for patients, as their medical vocation required, despite the ...”

“... an email with the subject line: ‘Important information about our recent cyber incident’.As you may be aware, we are currently experiencing a major technology outage as a result of a cyber attack. Following confirmation that this was a ransomware attack, we’re aware that some data have been leaked. While this appears to be from our internal HR files, we ...”

“... elevate their subject from the parochial to the universal. In practice, the vast majority of them may only study one French region, one provincial town, or even one Parisian arrondissement, but armed with a mixture of grand theory, methodological ingenuity and chutzpah, they often address their conclusions to a far broader humanity. And this is an enviable ...”

“... onto other people.Such portentous reflections are pre-eminently relevant to the reception of what may otherwise seem a modest or even a specialised book about the Japanese architectural tradition. Indeed, the West has always been willing to acknowledge that Japanese architecture, whether the traditional kind or its extraordinary modernist production, was ...”

“... Catholic priests, bringing hundreds to trial for alleged paedophilia. Some of these accusations may well have been based in fact, but many were not; the regime exploited them to secularise Catholic schools and close down many other lay institutions. Relations continued to deteriorate, and hundreds of German Catholic priests were imprisoned in concentration ...”

“... to moor for three days, collecting fresh water and provisions. Muhammad Rabi’ noted that ‘one may find the same fruits here in the market as in India.’ The delegation then sailed for 47 days through stormy seas to Chinapatan (later Madras), on the Bay of Bengal. The port was at that time ‘rented’ by the British, who wined and dined the Iranian ...”

“... and, just like it, the order is crucial. If the wrong amino acids stick together, the protein may not fold properly in the subsequent steps; if two helices that were supposed to nestle into each other late in the folding process come in contact too early, the final shape may not form. This problem is solved by other ...”

“... new terms, something which had exercised critics for years. He warned that ‘single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the tongue continue the same, but new phraseology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns.’ If nobody stopped the translators, the English would be left ‘to ...”

“... the women killed by Jack the Ripper, which concentrated on their lives before autumn 1888. Crippen may be the name forever associated with the ‘North London cellar murder’, but here he is treated by Rubenhold as one character in ‘an ensemble cast brought together to tell a more panoramic and human version of one of the most infamous crimes of the early ...”

“... reader also found some of the author’s comments rather intrusive. ‘My guess is ...’ ‘There may be something to this ...’ ‘I am inclined to believe ...’ or ‘More important, it seems to me ...’ And one has the impression that he likes his history to fit. He is also too inclined to have his pointers out – ‘Now we move on again, to the West ...”

“... violently lashing out with all resources at his disposal. The persistent calls for regime change may well be moving him into that dangerous ‘back against the wall’ posture. Disturbing, if not particularly surprising; and certainly not a case for war. ‘Of one thing we can be sure,’ Post concludes, ‘this is a man who “will not go gentle into that ...”

“... driver. FMD, the tragic traincrash (ten dead) yesterday are what we talk about: Heddon-on-the-Wall may be infected from untreated swill, the micro virus and the cattle plague that could cross borders between bloc and bloc when the world was so divided, let alone unpatrolled farm fences, ditch and lane. The taxi’s heater’s fierce, we discuss the icicles ...”