“... misleading impression that it was easy to accuse someone of witchcraft on flimsy pretexts, which may have been true during severe panics but usually was not. Persistent doubt throughout the early modern period explains both the relative rarity of prosecutions – around 100,000 across an entire continent and three centuries is not that many – and the high ...”

“... their convictions, all but one were quickly amnestied by the Paris government. Its attitude may have been influenced by the fact that the French army had carried out many more recent mass killings of civilians in the course of suppressing revolts in Algeria (1945) and Madagascar (1947), and was even then committing massacres in Indochina, still a French ...”

“... machines cool enough to stop them breaking down. A paper in the energy research magazine Joule in May 2018 estimated that bitcoin mining globally was consuming at least 2.5 gigawatts, almost as much as the country of Ireland in its entirety, implying that each individual bitcoin transaction required, on average, between two hundred and three hundred kilowatt ...”

“... ways in different geopolitical contexts – Atlantic, Mediterranean and domestic – this may provide some comfort as we confront the post-Brexit situation. The Brexiters’ shrill rejection of Theresa May’s deal with the European Union, which aimed at preventing costly trade friction and at preserving the ...”

“... outpaced the German invasion, getting the last train out of Paris. They stayed in Marseille until May 1942, when they left for New York via Casablanca. In Marseille, Simone decided to work as a farmhand. She also asked Thibon, who had reluctantly agreed that she could work on his farm, to let her sleep outside, which he absolutely refused to do. In the end ...”

“... by a mountain of a man dressed in a jellaba. He tells me to hurry up the stairs – the briefing may already have started. Upstairs is a large room with whitewashed walls and grey carpet tiles. On one of the walls a banner proclaims that there is no God but God. A panel of young, bearded men are sitting under the banner, facing a semi-circular swathe of TV ...”

“... of the jubilation surrounding Blair’s arrival in Downing Street, however forced much of that may have been. The election campaign itself was in part responsible for the absence of excitement. Avoiding any sharp challenges or radical commitments, Gerhard Schröder promised no more than a reformist modicum, under the slogan ‘We don’t want to change ...”

“... flesh and blood, I can do with you what I will.’ She cannot sleep for terror, sometimes, that he may struggle ‘from his bed, like a great frog struggling, squattering across the floor, thump thump on the stairs’. After he dies the memory continues, ‘festering away in a closet of her mind’, and it festered with me too, half-asleep in a smelly ...”

“... In Frank Auerbach’s Recent Pictures, at Marlborough Fine Art (until 24 October), there may appear to be a compulsive zest. Alleyway and streetscape, seated figure and reclining head, are confidently asserted, eyes jabbed into expression, zig-zag strokes softening edges and sawing up the sides of tower blocks across the Hampstead Road ...”

“... the Museum of Modern Art, which is currently staging the exhibition Projects: Ming Smith (until 29 May).Like her contemporary Nan Goldin, Smith was a part of the scene she photographed, and was less interested in documenting it than in depicting its specific moods and textures, and her own responses to it. (That she’s far less well-known than Goldin is an ...”

“... by this jerky robot whose various attachments include A large hook for turning over corpses that may be booby-trapped; But I still have this picture of his hands held up to avert the future In a final act of no surrender, as, twisting through the murky fathoms Of what might have been, he is washed ashore as pearl and coral. This strange eruption to our state ...”

“... never blush. Death is the focus of the blockbuster show at the National Portrait Gallery (until 27 May): these fleshy phantoms stand or recline in a universe of putrefaction. The individual canvases are stunning, but when you see them all together, a sense of spiritual plague comes off them like a dead-handed signature, reminiscent of the sun-blotting visions ...”

“... reading, writing and critical thinking abilities. Without a copy of Lord of the Flies, I may not be able to do a reading project in this class. This would mean that my students would go through my whole class without ever utilising an actual book.’ Hardy Williams is run with public money but as a charter school is exempt from most school district ...”

“... The Protectorate was over, the Commonwealth had failed. Charles II entered London on 29 May 1660, his birthday, and began hanging judges and reopening theatres. Tongue firmly in cheek, a royal patent lamented that ‘many plays formerly acted do contain several profane, obscene and scurrilous passages’: the solution was to have women’s parts henceforth played by women, as ‘useful and instructive representations of human life ...”

“... many sports, murky. It wasn’t on the programme at the Ancient Greek Olympics, though the Minoans may have used poles to leap over the bulls during bull-dancing events. According to one story, the modern sport derives from a traditional way of getting around the Fens of East Anglia, or other waterway-riddled parts of Europe, such as the Netherlands. At any ...”