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“... interest in the hidden dealings of the rich and powerful. Tiny Rowland, Mohammed Al Fayed and Robert Maxwell have all received the treatment and been carefully scrutinised. His account of Maxwell’s affairs delved into the murky depths, but he also kept a wary eye on the dubious ethics of the business world around the man, and produced an interestingly ...”

“... and non-transparent. There was considerable overlap of responsibilities, and the existing civil service was marginalised. Rural administration and military support depended on the uncertain loyalties of regional commanders, who in turn relied on half-amateur personal militias. Many people had associated with the Taliban during their five years as the Kabul ...”

“... of wealth acquisition that thrives on inequality, but leaves no one better off. Twenty years ago Robert Frank wrote a brilliant book about the quest for status, Choosing the Right Pond, and Offer’s contribution brings Frank’s analysis up to date. We run faster and faster, for longer and longer, just to keep up. And it isn’t only about status. As Fred ...”

“... suppose and admire, and upon occasion celebrate, but do not call in question or discuss.’ Thus Robert Boyle, progenitor of English science, in A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, 1686. Boyle found eight meanings for the word, and pretty much suggested we scrap the lot. No one paid him any heed. Nature is too deeply entrenched in our ...”

“... movement, which reduced union leaders’ ability to moderate the pay demands of their members. As Robert Taylor observes in his contribution to Crines and Hickson’s book, the unions were too weak institutionally to play the role Wilson required of them; and their historic commitment to free collective bargaining was irreconcilable with the corporatist ...”

“... mentis owing to terrible head injuries received while fighting in the Napoleonic Wars in the service of king and country; it would be barbaric to convict him of high treason, for which he might be hanged, drawn and quartered. The lord chief justice was persuaded to halt the trial and set Hadfield free. His release led to a public outcry and the swift ...”

“... treated his heroine without mercy. In The Testament of Cresseid, a sequel by the Scots poet Robert Henryson, Cresseid is reduced to prostitution and – by counsel of the gods – stricken with leprosy. Chaucer borrowed the plots of both ‘The Knight’s Tale’ and Troilus and Criseyde from Boccaccio, who was still alive during his first trip to ...”

“... 20th century, among them Elizabeth Hardwick, Jean Stafford (these two had been better known as Robert Lowell’s wives) and Lucia Berlin, whose luminous short stories seem to me as good as anyone’s. Now Picador have published Blue in Chicago, a collection of stories by Bette Howland, born in 1937, a Jewish writer from a working-class neighbourhood in ...”

“... She was influenced by the work of Walter Pater, and by her friendships with Henry James, Robert Browning and John Singer Sargent. But she was never swayed to the extent that she relinquished her intellectual independence. An atheist and materialist, she had no time for contemporary flirtations with the occult. In 1885 she attended a meeting of the ...”

“... glazes, from pearlescent creamware (called ‘Queensware’ after Queen Charlotte bought a table service) to black ‘basalt’, which was matte and sooty as a lump of coal and often painted with red figures in imitation of ancient vases. Wedgwood was always trying to make his vases seem ‘un-pot-like’, to lift them out of the earthy associations of clay ...”

“... is the effect pit bulls have on essayists. To report the affair at all was to become a nark in the service of the agents of ‘dirty realism’. Bill Sikes and his mutt looked fearsome, but they were no more implicated in the crime’s leisurely aftermath than I was. But why, at this point in our culture, do we choose to invoke the dog, the ‘prime ...”

“... a purely antiquarian urge. Post-Reformation alchemy was increasingly secularised, aligned with service to the state – it involved distilling medicines, mining, metallurgy and reforming the mint. The rich and powerful didn’t abandon hope that a lowly alchemist might yet change the world. In 1565 Elizabeth set up a Dutch alchemist in his own workshop at ...”

“... would bear fruit in later years.Ross’s first big break came when he volunteered for army service during World War One. His interest in the European hostilities was strictly professional: as he saw it, war-reporters were the ultimate hobos. But he had also developed an interest in editing. At 18, on the Maryland Appeal, he had briefly been put in ...”

“... And there is one soldier (played by Jim Caviezel) who is a drifter unconvinced by the duties of service. For the rest it is a film about a band of men encumbered by weapons and uniforms in an Eden they do not comprehend or even notice. The big attack is desperate and bloody enough for military enthusiasts. But this is also a film about insects and grasses ...”

“... a return of sorts to the day before the meeting with Pascal, when she encountered Lucien’s uncle Robert, who may be planning something sexual for her, then a brief shower, and at last she’s off to her meeting, back in the narrative present. I wish I could say there is a reason for any of this, but I was left with the impression that Kushner had groped her ...”