“... and dying, common to us all, could suddenly be overcome. Today, bringing an artist back to life may well be a promoter’s most lucrative opportunity. The artist’s bones might be deep in Forest Lawn, but the audience expects and will pay for his presence. Michael Jackson Live? It’s a no-brainer, securing the singer a kind of higher existence – a ...”

“... that ends well.Given what it sets out to do, it’s hard to fault The Thursday Murder Club. It may be the literary equivalent of the ultra-processed snack foods that Chris can’t help gorging himself on, full of ‘empty calories’, but, on their own terms, it’s hard to fault a packet of cheese and onion crisps or a Wispa bar, either. (That said, the ...”

“... individuals have any particular feeling for their own offspring. Chicks are fed fairly. All this may seem strange, but it reflects sophisticated evolutionary interplay. C0-operative breeding allows for more consistent protection of nests, reducing predation, and increases the resources chicks have access to, vastly improving chances of fledgling ...”

“... collection of eyewitness reports by clergymen describing conditions in their parishes in April and May 1847. Their accounts reveal the dehumanising realities of everyday life. Priests reported finding the dead along roadsides or abandoned beside bushes and ditches. People resorted to eating nettles and seaweed, carrion and earth. Relief provided by the ...”

“... and provoke, so that his readers will think about the issues he presents – an aim in which he may well be successful, for he has the peculiar distinction of being able to persuade the lay public to read books about civil law. I have no idea whether he plans further contributions, but the best of Lord Denning is surely to be found not in such ephemeral ...”

“... of his book Mr McCowen casts doubt on the Virgin Birth – he is prepared to accept that his Lord may have been illegitimate. In claiming God was his father Jesus avoided the embarrassment of bastardy and when he is baptised he experiences for the first time the validity of his claim. He is a very scared man indeed and departs for a spell in the ...”

“... I believe that people are more important than genes, whatever geneticists and sociobiologists may preach. Such ex cathedra statements are really an insult, particularly to the non-specialist reader, as is also Dawkins’s statement in the same article that ‘behaviour is movement produced by muscle or its functional equivalent.’ The word ...”

“... Write here the names of those you pray for. 70. Write here to whom you pray. 71. From here on you may add optional questions, and need not supply answers. (Success or failure in the above paper will lead inevitably to riches or poverty; define these in your own ...”

“... techno-authoritarianism and mass surveillance will speak to Chinese visitors in a way that Cubism may not. Outside the museum, the pedestrian crossing consoles use facial recognition to identify and publicly shame jaywalkers: their photos flash up on a screen, along with their personal details. The Xuhui district, which surrounds the art quarter, has been ...”

“... and orders. Any retaliation or punitive action is bound to target civilians, among whom there may be a handful of people who are involved in active resistance against Israel. Haifa was treated as an enemy base in 1948, as was Jenin in 2002; now Beit Hanoun, Rafah and Gaza are regarded that way. When you have the firepower, and no moral inhibitions against ...”

“... of the homo sacer – the criminal excluded from society who loses his rights as a citizen and ‘may be killed and yet not sacrificed’. His theory centres on the idea that sovereignty necessarily produces bare life, and keeps humans in this ambivalent state, caught in the law but also excluded from it. The state of exception or emergency is the clearest ...”

“... of the more than 14 million items that never reached their destinations between August 2004 and May 2005. According to the Royal Mail, 99.93 per cent of items are safely delivered. This means that nearly 60,000 letters and parcels go missing every day. Harvey was jailed for a year at the beginning of March. Pleading guilty to theft and delaying the delivery ...”

“... grotesque: full-dress aliens, perfectly wardrobed as the Other, ranting fire and brimstone. But it may be safer, in trying to explain why a free press is so important – and a press that is free to give offence – not to fall back on the word ‘democracy’. Many people who think like the demonstrators, and millions who don’t, remember the Islamic ...”

“... the planet Venus will pass directly enough between us and the sun for its shadow to be visible. It may seem premature to announce this now, but four years isn’t so much on the grand scale, and Eli Maor, a mathematician from Chicago, has written a book about it: Venus in Transit is published this month. These transits happen twice a century or so, the last ...”

“... It may be that by the time this issue of the LRB is published, the monarchy-obliterating secret that lurks on Fleet St will have been revealed and the last of the Windsors will be preparing for exile in Bermuda, or some other far-flung corner of their former realm: Port Stanley, say, or Balmoral. Paul Burrell will have packed their bags for them one last time ...”