“... Over the winter, you may have seen posters for a movie, certificate 12A (‘moderate fantasy violence and horror . . . limited bloody images’): a bunch of teenagers, Hollywood-dishy, but coloured to look like corpses, with greenish-tarnished complexions and uncanny eyes. The movie, Twilight, is about a coven of high-school vampires in the American Pacific Northwest, and is adapted from the first of a series of four novels by Stephenie Meyer; the last instalment, Breaking Dawn, came out last year ...”

“... be taken over by Communists. The Russians would be marching down our high streets, and instead of May processions in the Virgin’s honour, there would be exhibitions of Cossack dancing. Miri Rubin’s excellent and learned book explores how the meaning of Mary was constructed and directed, how its possibilities blossomed out through two millennia and were ...”

“... to know what you think about how you are; his problem is that, before the conversation is over, he may well have developed your symptoms himself. Hypochondria is not – or not only – a form of self-indulgence. It is also a form of pathological empathy. Charles Darwin wanted to be a doctor, but was too sensitive to human suffering. It is a worrying thought ...”

“... philosophy’ rather than as a bisexual nymphomaniac who went gaga. He also suggests that they may turn her into ‘a role model for young women today’. A prospect that, on reading them, seems neither likely nor at all desirable. Perhaps the greatest myth about Murdoch that both these books inadvertently explode is the fact often restated by her many ...”

“... look like ‘an Englishwoman of some privilege’ when she’s actually nothing of the kind. She may not be English, but when you’ve been to certain schools and universities, mixed and holidayed with and married certain people, lived and worked (or not worked) in certain places, it’s not clear what advantages you can be said to have missed out ...”

“... the flat roof which for decades afterwards served as the Politburo’s reviewing stand for May Day and Revolution Day parades in Red Square. On such occasions, Getty writes, ‘the Politburo stood on Lenin’s tomb – literally on his body.’ The idea that traditional (Muscovite) practices resurfaced in the Soviet period has a long genealogy in ...”

“... long since drawn a single general conclusion: we’re all being watched, all the time. You may also think this is something we sort of knew anyway. Perhaps you see ubiquitous spying as a function of the post-9/11 authoritarian state, which gathers knowledge by any means possible in order to consolidate its control, and which sees us all as potential ...”

“... and resigned, having failed to square the circle he had helped to draw twenty years earlier. In May 1939, the British government changed its policy again and issued a White Paper setting out plans for the independence of an undivided Palestine, only to back down once more, this time giving way to the Zionists. Throughout this tortuous and fruitless ...”

“... a double volume containing Hesperides and His Noble Numbers or Pious Pieces. The publication may have been a way of supplementing his drastically reduced income: if he presented copies to those praised within it he might expect a little something in return. After 1648 Herrick printed only one further poem. So Hesperides did amount to, as it said on the ...”

“... On​ 31 May 1578, vineyard workers on the Via Salaria in Rome found a tunnel which led them to an early Christian burial site. They had opened the catacombs: the vast network of passages cut through the volcanic tuff outside Rome in which thousands of Christians, as well as Jews and pagans, were buried. The vineyard workers were not the first to spelunk in these artificial caves ...”

“... and targeting residents in border areas’. An additional clause noted that ‘other matters as may be requested shall be addressed,’ a reference to private commitments by Egypt and the US to help thwart weapons smuggling into Gaza, though Hamas has denied this interpretation of the clause. During the three months that followed the ceasefire, Shin Bet ...”

“... With an increasing number of Chinese entering South Africa, or staying on illegally, the total may now be more than 500,000. French’s anecdotal evidence adds precious insights. After working as a translator for a state-owned Chinese company in Madagascar, Zhang Yun, a member of the lower middle class back home, stayed on selling goods on a margin as a ...”

“... in the argument about excuses, it mixes high theory and daily practice. It’s true that we may not be able to make a final decision, or any decision at all in the abstract, but we can’t understand the sentences in the abstract either. The fine point of deconstruction is not that we can’t decide but that we have to keep deciding. In Yeats’s ...”

“... and ‘compromised by the severe censorship they were subjected to’ in the Soviet Union. This may be a bit harsh: when I went back to the memoirs after reading the diaries, they struck me as rather less misleading and tendentious than you might expect; the concessions to Soviet orthodoxy (on such matters as the Non-Aggression Pact, the Finnish War and the ...”

“... impasse in which the West now finds itself, an impasse in large part of its own making. Hollande may speak confidently of a war to destroy IS once and for all, but his options are limited, and unpalatable, and his lack of imagination imposes further constraints. Mass arrests, interrogations and surveillance could make France safer in the short term, only to ...”