“... When he meets Mustaq, Jamal is wearing the dead man’s wristwatch and Mustaq notices it: ‘This may seem odd to you, but something is making me quite curious,’ he said. ‘Can I see that?’ He wanted to look at my watch. I showed it to him. Suddenly, the past seems about to burst through the smooth surfaces of the present and cause havoc with ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... in the interpretation of Duchamp, away from The Large Glass as the centre of his oeuvre (though it may shift back at the PMA where The Large Glass is a fixture). Indeed, both the exhibition and the catalogue are preoccupied with ‘his direct and deep engagement … with the inherently conservative institution of the museum’, above all MoMA and the ...”

“... myself drawn to Mother. Why does she stay with King, even after he has raped their daughter? She may be an ‘enabler’, as the contemporary term goes but I wonder to what extent she has a choice. One of the hallmarks of King’s philosophy is that the only way of responding to the dangers of the world is to create a family. It’s ‘the love of the ...”

“... African as well as Arabian, were an immense savannah until six or seven millennia ago, and may return to that state, but recorded history began at a moment when they were formidably dry, at one extreme in their long sequences of desiccation and renewal. That moment in the cycle was set off by a tilt – or rather a slight wobble – in the Earth’s ...”

“... announced that Jewish influence was to be eliminated, Schoenberg walked out of the meeting. In May, he and his family left for Paris. Schoenberg returned to the Jewish faith – with Marc Chagall as a witness.The New York Times announced the arrival of the Schoenbergs on 31 October 1933, noting that they were accompanied by their terrier, Witz, explained ...”

“... If you live in an American swing state you may have received a copy of ‘Obsession’ in your Sunday paper. ‘Obsession’ isn’t a perfume: it’s a documentary about ‘radical Islam’s war against the West’. In the last two weeks of September, 28 million copies of the film were enclosed as an advertising supplement in 74 newspapers, including the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education ...”

“... between public road and private apron. One should have guessed. The fashion for outdoor eating may wither in winter, but the perceived width of pavements has permanently narrowed. Negotiations between different users result in a proliferation of signs, marks, barriers and labels. They disturb the appearance of streets, which look best when they are ...”

“... trundling about its surface. The latest is a Nasa lander called Phoenix, resident on Mars since 25 May, which is currently chugging around the north polar region looking for water and evidence of habitability. This is impressive, given how hard it is to get to Mars. A total of 20 probes, Russian, Japanese, American and European, have crashed on their way to ...”

“... Only her fingers are caught up in an area of abstraction: bright red, yellow and green blocks that may not be fingers at all, but something she is wearing. In the Eliot portrait of 1938, two hangings on the wall behind him give a taste of Lewis in a less objective mood. In 1938, the Royal Academy refused to hang the picture. They had spotted phallic references ...”

“... of emergency in November. ‘Under Indian and Pakistani laws,’ Wajid wrote in the Journalist in May, ‘foreign media companies must broadcast through a local outlet. The BBC’s deal with its partner station in Pakistan, Mast FM 103, could make its broadcasts of BBC bulletins subject to PEMRA’s regulatory standards.’ They could, in other words, be ...”