“... recounting the harrowing story of her rape. She is subdued, hesitant and entirely convincing. This may be because she is telling the truth, but everything in the context suggests that her acting – unlike Souleymane’s – is perfect. The implication is that the truth needs to be formed, just as much as untruths do.Souleymane is next in line for a practice ...”

“... Shortly after the murder, Mahmoud Abbas declared Juliano a shaheed, a martyr. But though he may have given his life to the Palestinian cause, he was not killed by an Israeli bullet. The man who shot him was Palestinian, and probably from the camp: no one else would have known how to navigate those streets, or how to disappear so quickly. The killing ...”

“... was a deliberately experimental, avant-garde purchase of a pizza, for 10,000 bitcoin, made on 22 May 2010. (The community marks the anniversary of the first transaction by celebrating Bitcoin Pizza Day. At current values, that pizza cost £2.77 million.) The first large-scale criminal application for bitcoin began life months later, early in 2011. Silk ...”

“... the place is solemn and still, though the area is part of the regular beat for Border Patrol. In May 2001, among dozens of crossings, a group of 26 migrants entered the Tucson Sector from Mexico. During a vigorous pursuit by Border Patrol, 14 lost their bearings, including three guides, ending up in a stretch of desert known as the Devil’s Highway, where ...”

“... both of them, Madeleine as much as Francis. That they were religious and interested in mysticism may explain part of it, but the fact that they were old and made clear their loathing for Ireland’s pieties is also significant. They were warm and deeply engaged with the world and with each other. Many of us came away from their house inspired and cheered ...”

“... recklessness and pluck, but also for his good humour, his sense of fun and his kindness. It may not seem very kind to insult a stranger then smack him in the head with all your might, but the other boy was most assuredly not a nice boy and my brother had probably heard ill of him somewhere along the line. Also, he was clever. He knew that if the other ...”

“... of North Africa had advanced and receded like the sands on which they were drawn. Then, in late May 1942, the Axis forces led by Erwin Rommel smashed into the British line from the rear, and a month later his Panzerarmee Afrika was streaming across the Libyan border into Egypt. The advance was so swift that units from both armies found themselves going full ...”

“... us than that of diversitvy, which epitomises for us a long past of misfortune and abjection?’ It may be less the fact than the cult of regional diversity that tells us something Specific about the history of France.There is a second claim for French specificity in Braudel’s account, less prominent or pursued, but comparable in kind. Turning from geography ...”

“... of $445 billion.Zuckerberg’s news about Facebook’s size came with an announcement which may or may not prove to be significant. He said that the company was changing its ‘mission statement’, its version of the canting pieties beloved of corporate America. Facebook’s mission used to be ‘making the world ...”

“... set against a western hill and facing an eastern hill, with the north boundary of hawthorn hedge, may trees, willow trees, had only brief sun in the morning, making the house cool even in summer, but if you looked from the cool and often cold world of the house you’d see, down on the flat by the creek and beyond it, a world where the sun stayed late, in ...”

“... Nothing untoward has so far happened in Venezuela, although we do not, of course, know what plans may be under consideration in the deeper recesses of Washington. At any rate, now that the Cold War has ended the Americans can no longer denounce their critics to the South as the puppets of Moscow. The gadarene rush from the countryside to Caracas in the ...”

“... Admittedly, to call the Dmanisi site ‘the cradle of the Europeans’ is pushing it. Politicians may rejoice at the phrase, especially in France, where President Chirac is said to be ardent about ‘proto-European’ Dmanisi, but palaeontologists turn slightly pale. There is no evidence that these little creatures were about to chip and scavenge their way ...”

“... claiming it was in some way jinxed or haunted or evil, or something. The more prosaic truth may be that he suddenly realised how shockingly dull and pro-forma it sounded in comparison to his best work. All we really know is that sometime in 1987 Prince either finally fell apart, exhausted, or had some kind of semi-psychotic break, abetted by drugs he ...”

“... a woman, disembowel her and then reanimate her corpse. If you read Bidart’s books in order you may also find yourself startled early on by typography, as in this passage from The Sacrifice (1983): The War allowed me to project, – to EMBODY, – an ultimate ‘aspect’ of the ‘self’ … Such extreme typesetting reflects extreme states of mind: the ...”

“... believing her to be Mead’s wife. Pilkington then wrote to Mead asking for assistance, and may well have mentioned her illicit knowledge of his affairs (blackmail was a motif in her life, and people subscribed to the Memoirs in order not to be named in them). Mead sent her one final guinea and refused further contact. Clarke’s comment on the incident ...”