“... the difference between a good and a poor outcome. Commonly the defendant will be insured, and it may be worth the insurer’s while to pay the claimant to go away.Such legal claims are not myth-dependent. In fact the Health and Safety Executive maintains a myth-buster website. But there has been a proliferation of fraudulent or inflated injury claims ...”

“... with humans gave way to the world described in the Book of Genesis. Evolutionists and creationists may argue over the origins of life, but they agree on the salient point that animals came first, whether concocted in primordial slime or fully formed by their creator on the fifth day and sixth morning. From the Biblical point of view, however, they barely ...”

“... independent experts are sceptical, citing evidence that the camps are still in operation – some may even be expanding. Social media platforms are still full of posts asking for information about missing Uyghur relatives. Among those detainees who are released, many are sent straight from the camps to factories where they are forced to work under what the ...”

“... bliss, mindlessness, abjection, release,’ Veronica says of Ada, her grandmother, and a man Ada may or may not have had sex with. Anything can be done, or undone: ‘There is something immoral about the mind’s eye.’ Carmel is aware her memory contains gaps, that it can correct reality or be corrected. What she ...”

“... was a Naval officer as Trelawney had been, but probably of a more sober and reliable type, which may have been just as well. After physically assaulting an unpopular lieutenant Treawney went absent, by his own account, while still a midshipman, deserting his ship in the Seychelles and living with an exotic lady called Zela who was always clad in striped ...”

“... environment not otherwise deemed to have colour. The ocean in which these arbitrary islands float may in principle be white – that, famously, has been the ideal for interiors where Modernist art is displayed. Or, more likely, in the cooler design manners of recent years, something less absolute – creams, cloud-greys, the self-effacing neutralities of MDF ...”

“... it. They did greedily eat rocks.’ One might wonder where he managed to find ostriches, but he may have encountered them in the menagerie of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, who kept a travelling zoo that also included peacocks, camels, leopards, lynxes, apes, lions, giraffes and even an elephant with a wooden tower on its back. Albert’s treatment ...”

“... Brazil and Argentina. The Israeli government kept on sending Palestinians to Paraguay. In May 1970 the existence of the transfer scheme was exposed when two of the new arrivals – ‘Talal and Khaled, young men’, Mahmoud told me – were involved in a confrontation at the Israeli embassy in Asunción; there was an altercation and they opened ...”

“... resolution of the paradox the harem presents in relation to sexual appetite: although the seraglio may contain many women, coupling is, by definition, done in pairs and stamina sets a limit on serial or collective performance. She sees in the blissful, figure-cushioned interior he has assembled (much of it from other paintings, not all of them his own) a ...”

“... she has been taught to do. She’s hoping to run far enough north that she finds the French, who may be ‘papists’ but at least are not ‘heathens’. This tiny, starved body running through the woods takes on allegorical proportions. She is the servant who runs from the cruel master; the woman who runs from the man who rapes her; the European who runs ...”

“... mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi, killed in a helicopter crash in the northern forests on 19 May. In death he has been elevated to Seyyed Ayatollah Doctor Martyr Raisi. Billboards showed him managing the Covid crisis, greeting Revolutionary Guard commanders or meeting anonymous ‘regional’ rebels, with slogans to remind us that his loss hasn’t ...”

“... off. Moving off, away, out of mindfulness. Leaving behind. Relaxing into hypnagogia (a condition I may always have known about and desired, if not been able to name), anticipating the blurring of consciousness. It must have been a familiar routine, because I was so filled with confident pleasure of what was to come. Daydreaming a story ...”

“... set out a direction for the world and its peoples. Given​ the power of the east-west axis, it may seem surprising that the eastward orientation of the world was ever displaced, yet it was, on maps at least. Brotton identifies a number of reasons north became primus inter pares of the four cardinal directions. It starts with Greco-Roman culture, in ...”

“... This recasting of the Reformation is followed by a novel slant on the Enlightenment: Kant may have dared us all to use our reason, but took an unenlightened view of sexual desire, maintaining that all sex was debasing and likening masturbation to suicide. More encouragingly, this book also contains a great deal of love and subversion. In the 12th ...”

“... could break as well as make alliances. Village holidays and male fellowship in the alehouse may have provided an opportunity to affirm ties despite differences in wealth. And as more formal associational life grew over the course of the 18th century, new affiliations, such as friendly societies, gradually created social bonds that enabled a different ...”