“... vision of a senseless universe just as readily as an idyllic escape into pure play (at its best it may do both at once: The Goon Show was both a shattered, deranged response to the aftermath of World War Two and a hilarious antidote to it), and it is particularly surprising that Malcolm should fail to point out the presence and seriousness of nonsense in some ...”

“... light, steadfast in serene strength like a god’. Such personifications, all positive and happy, may seem too soft-focused. Sometimes the rhapsodies cloy: ‘Glaciers came down from heaven, and they were angels with folded wings, white wings of snowy bloom. Locked hand in hand the little spirits did nobly’ (letter of 1871 to Mrs Carr). Or again, from his ...”

“... he put up no resistance. Instead, he presided over the demise of his principal political ally in May 1966. Did he think this was the price to be paid for remaining Mao’s heir apparent? Or was it simply the disciplined behaviour of the ultimate apparatchik? Did he experience no conflict of loyalty between the claims of the leader and the claims of the ...”

“... a ‘Faunus’ to Pan. A pet’s sex life is the most problematic part of its alterity, which may in part be why late 20th-century accounts focus on a shared mortality rather than a different vitality. A pet’s death may also be the only one its owners witness. The motley crew of ‘vets’n’pets’ programmes on ...”

“... Hill attest to a strong left-wing strain in Iowa’s politics which has been influential and may be so again. They worry about health, education, environment, with the recognisable language and manner of Labour Party activists. One guest of the Hatches, Nancy Stillians, is preoccupied with campaign finance reform, and tells me ideally she would vote for ...”

“... up. I did not expect to be more than bored, but found myself extremely moved almost at once. You may believe that what is being celebrated will turn out a delusion, but history is full of gloomy afterthoughts. Here you have celebrated a victory of revolt against tyrants, supported by the countryside alone, practically with their bare hands, against a ...”

“... least one chimp (which survived at Lindi for more than two years) came from the Mbandaka area, so may well have been one of Hahn’s west central African chimps. Because cages and play-cages were shared, just one such SIV-infected chimp might have caused widespread SIV infection throughout the colony. So even if Hahn is right, it doesn’t disprove the OPV ...”

“... of ‘Architecture or Revolution’, which concludes Vers une architecture: the architect ‘may have to emulate the Futurists’ or ‘technological culture’ may ‘go on without him’. As Whiteley argues, this revision of modern architecture was not only academic: to study Futurist history was also a way for ...”

“... during the fall of Malaga in February 1937, and was imprisoned in Seville until the following May, spending much of his time in solitary confinement and in constant fear of the firing squad. Out of his experiences in Russia and Spain came Darkness at Noon, which was published in 1940. Cesarani quotes Michael Foot to apt effect: Who will ever forget the ...”

“... Holmes observes, in the present volume especially, seem to be as follows. Coleridge’s poetry may be quoted where it appears to throw light on his private life. His prose writings may be discussed only so long as that discussion does not interrupt or retard the narrative: so long, that is, as the writing of a work can ...”

“... that there will always be ‘conflicts between one way of life and another’; that pacifism may promote war rather than prevent it, because it is more interested in giving the pacifist a clear conscience than in navigating the rough seas of actually existing hostilities; that deceit may sometimes be a political ...”

“... as a brilliant relic of its own time but as an unstilled voice in the conversation of ours. We may explore and even admire the minds of Gladstone’s mentors and contemporaries: Peel’s earnest reforming zeal, Palmerston’s gung-ho gunboat liberalism, Disraeli’s sugar castles of empire – though each is splendid in its way, they do not speak to us ...”

“... the effects of its opposite, and suggests that a relentless TV diet of sex and celebrity-gazing may bring about a ‘coarsening of the soul’. He’s not about to commission a remake of Civilisation, but his relish for the less salubrious side of his work is no longer what it was. Meanwhile, more meetings. Would we care for a screener of Sex Drives: The ...”

“... of her cousin Salah and her brother Fahdi when they were sitting together in a café the previous May. Without preamble, the soldiers drew up and shot them. According to Victor, a bomb-laden car that Fahdi was to drive into Haifa the next day was parked only a few feet away. Jaradat fled but ‘ran directly into the arms of Yasser Obeidi, one of the most ...”

“... the Office of Legal Counsel states, ‘to set the terms and conditions under which the president may exercise his authority as commander-in-chief to control the conduct of operations during a war.’ I take this quotation from an article in Daedalus by Sanford Levinson, who associates this not entirely new American practice with the political theories of ...”