“... delicacy as the motive. We should at least explore the idea that decorum was involved: odd as it may seem to us now, death was deemed a private affair about which those who needed to know would know by other channels. The pathos of the dead family is real, but different from that seen in recent issues of the New York Times. What is it then that governs the ...”

“... went on for two years after his illness. There were no more ‘natural’ cases and on 8 May 1980, Resolution WHA33.3 was signed at the eighth plenary meeting of the 33rd World Health Assembly. It declared that ‘the world and all its people’ had ‘won freedom from smallpox . . . which only a decade ago was rampant in Africa, Asia and South ...”

“... in itself.’ Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have led to charges of exposure. Psychoanalysis itself may or may not have been on trial: one would do better to ask whether Jones was not so much the victim of a misunderstood science as hiding behind it. The scandal, as Maddox shows, was the making of Jones. It pushed him to the ...”

“... had that palpable illusion help them make it through the night.’ He even suggests that ‘you may know the curve of her bottom as well as you know your child’s brow’ – and no doubt he does. Before writing Thomson off as a creep, it pays to watch a few Kidman films back to back. Her bottom does feature to a significant degree. We see a good deal of ...”

“... less exciting than the story of its manuscript being smuggled out of Albania, takes place on 1 May, sometime in the early 1980s. The narrator is a television journalist, who has for some reason been invited to sit among the Party faithful in one of the grandstands to watch the May Day Parade. As he walks through the ...”

“... into a policeman was a coming of age, though not necessarily a step in the right direction. Vidocq may not, as his admirers claim, have invented fingerprinting and the science of ballistics, but he did show the importance of keeping detailed criminal records. He proved, on occasion, that reason could be applied to problems previously left to chance and ...”

“... her services for odd jobs. At the word ‘services’ a viewer familiar with von Trier’s world may see the direction the story is likely to take. Oblivious of her future degradation, Grace – who has ‘never worked a day in her life’ – follows Tom’s instructions: she collects tasteless figurines from the local shop; she tends the gooseberry bushes ...”

“... everything revolves around their particular whims and inclinations, and by stamping on rivals who may be getting above themselves. Margaret Thatcher was such a prime minister, but so too was Edward Heath, perhaps to an even greater extent (Heath’s cabinet was composed almost entirely of admirers and minions), which goes to show that dominance does not ...”

“... appealing only to blacks), and Hillary, drawing an unspoken parallel, declaring that King may have been a great orator, but it was Lyndon Johnson who got the civil rights legislation passed. Certainly there are those who voted and will vote for or against Obama because of his race, but horizontal racism has largely disappeared in the US. These days, a ...”

“... research unit predicts that this year China will grow by only 5 per cent, and others argue that it may already have fallen into recession. Twenty million migrant workers have lost their jobs since the beginning of the crisis, and more than 60,000 factories have closed over the past year, as orders from Western companies have plummeted and foreign investment ...”

“... speak, because in satisfying our need for justice, say (this is one of his recurring examples), we may have to sacrifice our desire for mercy. He wants us to get used to self-betrayal as integral to the moral life and not alien to it, built in to choice making. Sometimes he can be blithe about all this – ‘I adore having relations with the enemy and ...”

“... such as his affairs with Leda Rafanelli and Margherita Sarfatti in the 1910s and 1920s, may have broadened his perspective, at least a little, whereas Claretta only confirmed him in his worst prejudices. With Leda Rafanelli, a pacifist who presided over a Milanese salon, he wrote of wanting to read ‘Nietzsche and the Quran together’. Margherita ...”

“... with their shouting matches, awkward silences and lengthy airings of patients’ grievances, may have been a grindingly slow and inefficient way of advancing hospital policy. But by refusing the supreme power invested in the asylum director, Basaglia accelerated the process of negation from within: nurses were slowly converted, and patients, feeling that ...”

“... But among all the gifts France has given to Hollywood, Broadway and the common reader wherever she may be, Les Misérables stands out as the greatest by far. This reconstruction of how this extraordinary novel arose, how it was published, what it means and what it has become is my way of saying thank you to France.Never abandoning this celebratory tone, The ...”

“... Griaule, would cross the continent from west to east, setting out from Dakar, in Senegal, in May 1931 and heading home from Djibouti in February 1933. It was one of the great 20th-century outings, a royal progress by a scientific vanguard of white men, approved by a vote in the French parliament and funded by subscription: Raymond Roussel, the wealthy ...”