“... to praise in Giacometti’s work; his evocation of a generic ‘man’, straitened and distended, may even have given Ponge the idea that he could start again, learning from Giacometti how to whittle this enormous subject down to within a millimetre of its armature. Yet in his notes for the essay, published in the 1960s, we see Ponge circling round the work ...”

“... in favour of periphrastic formulas such as ‘the Florentine artist’ or ‘the sculptor’. It may be that such formulas are less awkward in French than they are in English, where they seem to betray a misplaced qualm about repeating a name – or the awkwardness may be the point. Name and epithet soon start to ...”

“... Take the path to reach common richnessD. Vigorously develop social productivityMany candidates may be tempted to choose A. After all, ‘strengthen the CCP’s leadership’ is the correct answer to most questions. Some candidates may choose C, because Deng Xiaoping said ‘to be a socialist doesn’t mean you have to be ...”

“... is right there on the podium, just a stone’s throw away, surrounded by a crowd of 20,000 who may claim the status of longtime fans or enthusiastic converts. It should have been predictable that Trump would make no concessions to the pandemic. Without a pause or explanation, he continued the mass events that have kept his voter base eager through every ...”

“... up children’. This is a little melodramatic, but she knows this. At one point she imagines it may be her ‘destiny … to be always alone’, yet she also sees this as a ‘tragic, self-dramatising thought’. She finds ‘a kind of comfort’ in it. This is fast work: self-pity aware of how stagey it is, but all the more employable for that ...”

“... apologised, though one gets the sense that Springora, understandably, can’t forgive them. This may also be why she leaves out some of the context: in these petitions, the no doubt disturbing demands to decriminalise sex with those under fifteen had equal billing with calls for universal access to abortion and contraception, to remove references to ...”

“... he unknowingly wanted: friendship as a form of unreturned devotion. Even a king with diversions may need something else. ‘What is friendship?’ the narrator asks. ‘I do feel some for him, and where does it get me? I don’t know what I want, but I’ve had it up to here with what I’ve got.’ ‘Friendship’ is among the last words of the book, as a ...”

“... was included in a mass arrest of former tax collectors. He was convicted of embezzlement and, in May 1794, guillotined along with 27 of his colleagues.The perfume industry got a boost from Napoleon, who as first consul led the fashion for ever more elaborate toilettes, getting through sixty bottles of scent a month: he poured it in his bath, added it to wine ...”

“... appeared online. Palestinian teenagers followed the fighters on bikes or horses into land they may have heard about from their grandparents but was now transformed beyond recognition.After the bases came the settlements, and the massacres that no previous violence can justify. Families were burned or shot in their homes. In total, the fighters killed about ...”

“... third sign represented a pair (SHESH in Coptic), you would have a pre-Greek cartouche which ‘we may venture to call … Remesses’. On the first, second and last points he was correct. If Young had more insistently observed that the third sign in the cartouche of Ramesses included the very same bent line – the fold of cloth – he had transliterated as ...”

“... Last May​ , I was invited to the Ministry of Justice to take part in a discussion of ‘Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation’ (Slapps): legal cases whose purpose is to harass, intimidate and silence public criticism. I was ushered into a small, airless room with a group of other journalists and civil servants ...”

“... disreputable sister, spiritualism, became just as entangled with ideas of gender. Spiritualism may be understood as an elaborated expression of Victorian thinking about what it is to be female. In its early origins and growth, and its later humiliations and submersion, Owen has found a pattern for a searching critique of the means by which Victorian women ...”

“... If I’m not worth your making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to Hell directly, and if I am worth it and you don’t do it then – you might go there.  The whole business is too stupid and too beastly to go on writing about it so – L.W.Wittgenstein to Bertrand Russell:During the last week I have thought ...”

“... style (Augustus is said to have described it as ‘ringlets dripping with perfume’). The first may well be genuine – Suetonius had access to the imperial archives until he was booted out by Hadrian – but as Gowers warns, they ‘line up almost too perfectly’ with the style and subject of a fragment of Maecenas’ own work.Modern scholars have used ...”

“... outside a blanket shop that had a booming PA system was followed by a cup of tea. Glastonbury may be a full-on celebration of hedonism but for most of the people involved, drugs and dancing all night are just part of their way of life. An exception must be made for the man who was lying in the middle of a field talking to a blade of grass. It was ...”