“... the middle of the 19th century, clinical medicine had almost no beneficent impact on health and may well have caused more harm than good; doctors at the Battles of Gettysburg or the Wilderness had no more to offer wounded soldiers – except perhaps opium – than did their predecessors in the Persian or Punic Wars. As late as the Twenties there were only ...”

“... its simplest, we are now putting the Sunday papers in the recycling bin, but at its less simple we may be seeking what Emerson called, in Nature, ‘an original relation to the universe’. The times may have become ripe for turning self-control into a form of evangelism, sensing that our wish to be the planet’s saviours ...”

“... secure crisis management environment” whose name is in the public domain but to which we may not refer’. The only clues: it ‘lies below ground to a depth of five floors, somewhere in Central London’. I’m only guessing, but that ought to make it the facility known as PINDAR, which lurks beneath the MoD itself and was built between 1987 and ...”

“... warned that unless other European governments move quickly to boost their economies, they may find themselves facing similar unrest. New Democracy, the centre-right party led by Costas Karamanlis, came to power four years ago, promising to ‘reinvent’ the state, root out corruption and launch educational reform. Today the state is still in the ...”

“... The next image is from 1970. Hamilton set up a camera in front of his television for a week in May. The events at Kent State University – the shooting of student protesters by Ohio National Guardsmen – were in the news that week, and he made several exposures, choosing one showing a blurry shape. Cued by the title, Kent State, we soon identify the ...”

“... the Herut Party (today’s Likud) was far from power and its members were considered outsiders. It may be that as he ascended the political ladder, the possibilities were just too intoxicating. And when an American ‘exile Jew’ (a contemptuous term for Jews outside Israel), a professional schnorrer, who considered it a great honour to support him, offered ...”

“... the British Museum at the beginning of this year as you would your own in a magnifying mirror. You may be disgusted by the enlargement as Gulliver was by the huge girls of Brobdingnag: ‘their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured’, with moles ‘as broad as a trencher’. But the Lilliputian can be creepy too: think yourself a giant ...”

“... hedges disappear or get thinner. Around farm buildings trees imply shelter, and whereas farming may generally reduce the number of species, tree planting increases it. In France, a country where trees in public places, even along roads, tend to be under strict management, more part of the architecture than a contrast to it, formality distinguishes town from ...”

“... And yet what Anthill actually demonstrates is the precise opposite. Wilson’s human characters may exhibit antlike behaviour, but that proves nothing because they’re so unlike real human beings. While his ants – and this is a rare and marvellous achievement – are absolutely nothing like people ...”

“... the first in October 1979, a review of J.F.C. Harrison’s book on millenarianism, the last, in May this year, a review of Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. ‘Eloquently’: was that the right word? Not really. Frank’s writing was so much more exact, more stylish, more patient, more ironic, more playful, more attentive, more ...”

“... According to the Los Angeles Times, people may have ‘a basic setting on their happiness thermostat’. So don’t blame your current depression on your ex-wife, your sullen children, your forgetful old father, poor exam results, a bad hair day or a piss-poor speech by the pope. Depressing real-life events come and go, but your general capacity to feel gladness is fixed ...”

“... likes to use the metaphor of a person who exercises for the first time in a while – many muscles may be sore afterwards, but the exercise has done them good.’ The president is fiercely pro-American, even if he can’t take his lazy, benighted, under-exercised compatriots with him. Like Fireman Sam, Sarkozy was always on the move, even as minister of the ...”

“... light, as well as Californian money (Stanford was determined to get an answer; a substantial bet may have been involved): cameras were bought from England and fast shutters developed locally. A row of cameras, triggered by the animal itself (later by electric switches), in light bright enough to allow very short exposures (down to a 1000th of a ...”

“... many head to the mummies that were MacGregor’s first, childhood experience of the place. I may be snobbish about headphones, but I’m humbled by the scale of what there is to know. The marriage of objects and ideas has a touch of the old-fashioned children’s encyclopedia about it all. But I liked those ...”

“... the solemn, solid, bare-breasted, brown girls surrounded by flowers, fruit, trees and the sea, may have entered the popular imagination as images of blissful indolence but a closer look tells you that the pictures are sad. (In a letter to his wife, Mette, he once described the ‘harmony’ of his colours as ‘sombre, sad, frightening’.) Although his ...”