“... Chief Justice Kenyon said in relation to such a claim: ‘I do not mean to say that a stranger may not in any case prefer this sort of application; but he ought to come to the court with a very fair case in his hands.’ In 1835 the presiding judge of the Court of Exchequer added: ‘It has been the practice, which I hope never will be discontinued, for ...”

“... their ability to reason, appraise, act and participate. Seeing people in terms only of their needs may give us a rather meagre view of humanity.To use a medieval distinction, we are not only patients, whose needs demand attention, but also agents, whose freedom to decide what to value and how to pursue it can extend far beyond the fulfilment of our needs. The ...”

“... such strange concepts as ‘dark energy’, ‘braneworlds’ and ‘wormholes’ – terms people may have heard of or perhaps read about, but still don’t really understand. Brian Greene, a leading expert in string theory, has now followed up his earlier, very successful book, The Elegant Universe, to give lucid and accessible explanations of a wider range ...”

“... Woof, Woof, Dear Lord (Kedros, 1995) give something of their flavour. Dimitriou’s first novel, May Your Name Be Blessed, is a more likely candidate for cultural migration: history is more explicitly present than it is in the stories, offering a handhold for foreign readers. The displacements that followed World War Two and the collapse of Communism in ...”

“... is a history of rule over the people rather than by the people. Representative democracy may not be government by the people either, but at least it aspires to be government for the people. It has become the ubiquitous expression of the modern democratic impetus. Sovereignty is pivotal in the attempt to reconcile democracy and representation. It too ...”

“... court should refuse to entertain such a case and say it’s not constitutional business; but that may often be to leave standing an objectionable statute or an erroneous decision of a lower court. Instead, the US Supreme Court hangs its preferred solution on whatever constitutional peg it can find or devise. It was by this process, in the unsurprising absence ...”

“... is going on. First, there is a diligent detailed realism, essential in spite of whatever Pellerin may say. Time, place, action, clothes, food, dialogue and much more are reported – recreated – with impeccable, mildly obsessive care. Second, this approach is frequently, subtly invaded by moments of subjectivity or impressionism: we are seeing not what an ...”

“... the police had no conclusive evidence against any of the four by the end of the first week in May, although in law this would not have prevented them from making arrests. On 6 May the Lawrences met Nelson Mandela. Speaking of the police, Doreen Lawrence remarked: ‘They are patronising us and when they do that to me I ...”

“... when I was first irritated by that children’s rhyme, which is wrong twice over. Oil painting may well be hard but in some ways it’s easier than painting in watercolour, and watercolours are often more beautiful. However, the prejudice the rhyme encapsulates does arise from real differences. A typical oil painting is an object, a substantial piece of ...”

“... became intense. By 1850 Britton could report that ‘since the commencement of this century, it may be asserted that more has been written and published on the life … of Shakspere, than during the whole of the preceding period between the acting of his first drama and the year 1800.’ Katherine Duncan-Jones, in her brilliant, scholarly and concise ...”

“... se bene gesserint [during good conduct] … but upon the address of both Houses of Parliament it may be lawful to remove them’. (The Latin qualification was taken without acknowledgment from the ordinance by which the Long Parliament in 1648 had begun making judicial appointments.) It is generally accepted that the two limbs form a single condition ...”

“... Nargis struck Myanmar (let’s use the place names used by the World Food Programme) on 2 and 3 May, blasting the Ayeyarwady delta and the capital, Yangon. The population of the declared disaster areas – much of it the country’s granary – is about 13 million. About 1.5 million have been seriously affected. In many places houses, farming assets and ...”

“... do on the cinema. It’s Disney we should be worried for. To those who argue that all this is as may be but the vast majority of these books are about small wizards staying up past their bedtime or the love affairs of ex-glamour models, one can only say: that’s true. Still, 115,000 different titles are published in Britain each year and – if you leave ...”

“... And so to Ernest Hemingway, whose adventures recorded by the military historian Nicholas Reynolds may not admit such subtlety. Reynolds is a former curator of the CIA Museum in Washington. Reasonably, the museum is a bit cagey and I am not very familiar with it but, one way and another, the collection has received quite a boost of late. In Hemingway’s ...”

“... Wei is not going to tell us, but he invites us to think that the answer to our question may lie neither in probable history nor in fantasy but in absurdist philosophy or certain modes of detective fiction.The film opens with a quotation in French from Camus’s play Caligula: ‘We don’t understand destiny and that is why I became destiny. I ...”