“... passages that occasionally interrupt the book, that Daniel will eventually realise he is gay, and may be transgender. ‘You have to appreciate that I never thought of myself as a man,’ he says midway through the novel. ‘I did not know then that it was girls not boys who grew their hair and their nails long.’ I suspect that Elmet would like to be ...”

“... his allies viewed his survival as a providential blessing and political imperative. The civil wars may be considered a pivotal moment in British medicine, but victory and survival could still usefully be attributed to God. The​ final part of Battle-Scarred deals with ‘the hidden human costs’ of the civil wars – the psychologically damaged, the ...”

“... step with English opinion; the substantive issues were matters of relative indifference. Theresa May’s political ally, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, maintained a consistently negative policy towards European integration between the two referendums, though there were noticeable changes in tone and register. In 1975 the DUP’s co-founder ...”

“... relate to marriage, love, divorce, good health, job opportunities and promotion. Costlier spells may be sold to politicians seeking re-election, or to those who ask a sorcerer to exercise magical influence over a government official to force him to sign or refrain from signing a document – not an uncommon need, given that Iraqis spend large amounts of time ...”

“... The standard critique that contemporary society is swamped by spectacle, by images directed at us, may also have to be revised. If power today depends largely on data – on invisible information harvested, searched, surveilled and acted on by corporations, governments, insurance companies, credit agencies and police departments – how are we to track it, let ...”

“... the reg­ion and, at times, its most brilliant military strategist. Iran’s clerical leadership may have dreamed of an Iranian sphere of in­fluence – a Shia crescent – but it was Soleimani who built it, patiently and ruthlessly, after becoming head of the Quds Force in 1998. He spent most of his time on the road, ensuring that Iran’s interests were ...”

“... or sold at the Alexandria market. Oddly, Thompson suggests that these forms of resistance ‘may have backfired’ by leading whites to consider black men and women ‘lazy and clumsy workers … a stereotype that continues to this day’. Washington certainly believed that blacks were indolent by nature. But this was an integral part of the ideological ...”

“... to servers in China. Whatever the truth of these accusations, they raise the question of what may be involved when organisations attached to a particular state intervene in an extensive and sustained way in another country and continent, even if their interest appears – and is proclaimed to be – commercially driven. They also raise questions about the ...”

“... the editors thought it would be too far-fetched for Western readers. Radical Chinese nationalists may also be happy to see Trump re-elected. They have nicknamed him ‘the nation-builder’, because he has improved Chinese understanding of American hypocrisy and rallied people round the flag.Claims of double standards, Western hypocrisy and whataboutism are ...”

“... line of communication’ (stärkster Verbindung) with the castle. The wrong destination may, after all, be the right one; and in another sense, too, since K. falls asleep and dreams that he is wrestling with a naked castle official who resembles a Greek god. It’s all to no avail. The next morning, Bürgel can’t wait to get rid of him, and he is ...”

“... to me probably true that ‘politics’ is the prime category of historical explanation: but it may also be true that certain realities of power are ineluctable, whether politically conscious people actually talk about them or not. Autopsies on the Labour Party seem to be in fashion, perhaps prematurely in view of the fact that the patient is by no means ...”

“... divine John Edwards surmised that ‘there is scarcely a Town where there are not some that may justly be reckon’d in this number.’ The widespread anxiety about the rise of irreligion reflected in sermons, pamphlets and tracts is hard to reconcile with the shortage of actual instances of articulate unbelief. This intriguing paradox lies at the heart ...”

“... a go of Moominpappa’s ambition to be a lighthouse keeper. Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea may well owe something to Poe. In it, the trolls find the lighthouse deserted, the light broken and on a table hundreds of tiny scratches in groups of six, with a seventh drawn through to mark the weeks: ‘Week after week all the same, except one which had only ...”

“... X exceptional. Against the book’s impulse to make friends is the idea that political separation may be the only way certain desirable civic conditions can come to pass. Lacey has said that creating a political near-paradise (though even here, the leftists still like in-fighting) seemed to her necessary in order to write freely about same-sex marriage in the ...”

“... so much creative licence as a deep identification between the author and her subject. Cheri may remind her of the women she grew up with: working-class women, perhaps without the protection of husbands; women who generally rely on other women. Beard’s essay feels like a bravura attempt to rescue Cheri from the loneliness of her death. The pieces in ...”