“... had dropped by some ten million – i.e. to a half of what it had originally been. Readers may or may not be sceptical about the accuracy of this figure, which depends largely on guesswork as to the size of the Congo’s population before colonisation, together with an acceptance at face-value of the figures yielded ...”

“... disclaimers about ever having been a Nazi or a traitor, because he had only weeks to live and it may have been among his last efforts. The one from his fragrant wife survives, and reads as follows:Mr Hitchens, in his attack upon me, says that I regretted the defeat of Germany in the Second World War. On the contrary, in my view the greatest tragedy for us ...”

“... internally. Dante’s work of linguistic theory, De vulgari eloquentia, suggests that there may be more than a thousand ‘kinds of speech’ in Italy, and in his great poem several of these are recorded: as Carson notes in the introduction to his translation, the language ‘moves from place to place’. Virgil, representative of cosmopolitan ...”

“... classed as a war crime. International humanitarian law, the jus in bello, concerns the way wars may be fought. It is distinct from the law governing when wars may be fought (the jus ad bellum of self-defence and the UN Charter). Also known as the ‘laws of war’, international humanitarian law traces its origins to ...”

“... single proposition to be made which was ‘not deceitful, and the tying our reason too close to it may in many cases be destructive. Circumstances must come in.’ In the 18th, David Hume believed that ‘parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle’, were ‘perhaps the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon’ that had yet ...”

“... it contained not the slightest trace of misogyny or of self-contempt. Indeed, it may be entirely wrong to associate transvestism with homosexuality. One thinks of the impressive story of the Chevalier d’Eon, diplomatic representative of Louis XV in England. A valiant military man and notably skilled fencer, he eventually decided, on ...”

“... universe. Yet they were also very different men. Haber’s pragmatic conversion to Protestantism may have been unusual, but in other respects he was the model of an assimilated middle-class Jew. Like the subjects of two shorter essays here – the immunologist Paul Ehrlich (inventor of chemotherapy) and the physicist Max Planck – Haber embraced German ...”

“... I starved on dreams, and found them good. Some of the unsatisfied craving and self-laceration may derive from literary convention: although the same poem announces that ‘My love was false, and then she died,’ nothing in the present biography encourages us to take this literally. Levy herself acknowledged her debts to ...”

“... of stories in print. While the loveless world (and death-throes of a class) which they describe may not be to everybody’s taste, it is bizarre that du Maurier should have been dismissed as a lightweight romancer for girls. In an eye-opening final chapter, Auerbach puts the blame on the screen adaptations. Most people will only know her work from the ...”

“... about it, he is someone who spends most of his time making or studying or working with art, and it may well be that Millbank’s curatorial staff don’t care tuppence about the reactions of such people – that they’re addressing schoolchildren and tourists. If that is not their defence, they should abandon this hang – intended to last a ‘year or ...”

“... preposterously, to compete with the theme. ‘In attempting to control death, the toreros and I may have a little in common. We have attempted the impossible, something which stands in the face of nature.’ In Lorca’s mummified Granada home, she touches the light-switch he may have touched on the way to his death, and ...”

“... patronising and taken not a blind bit of notice. And so on, round and round. The 1960s generation may have had a dream, but it would seem from the contemporary sixth-former’s point of view that they didn’t achieve it. It would also seem that they have become dream-bound in relation to their past. Sheila Rowbotham’s memoir of the 1960s is an attempt to ...”

“... is left of US-China relations. Reacting to what it perceives as hostile American policies, China may already be taking steps to produce more missiles capable of reaching the US. As its chief arms negotiator told the New York Times earlier this month, ‘How can we base our national security on your assurances of goodwill?’ Some of America’s allies have ...”

“... stormy narcissism, and of Ransom’s detached courtliness, and to suspect that lovable Red Warren may not have been as cheerful as he seemed. The deft insiderism that marked some of Jarrell’s most memorable quips could easily be taken as an earnest of his genuine highmindedness – this mockery, the manner seemed to say, was literary not personal – and ...”

“... the same demon that drove Hooper on his quest for the source of Aids, that modern caput Nili. He may, or may not, have found that source; he has certainly written a gripping mystery ...”