“... Irish have become more cosmopolitan, Irish identity has been packaged for the market. The danger may be that in the process more open definitions of Irishness will be closed down. Irish ethnic branding exhibits a strange mix of insecurity and confidence, but confidence is certainly part of it. Foster makes a strong case for the period from the 1970s, and ...”

“... slaughtered relatives, destroyed homes, amputation of hands and feet and ears. Millions may still be living with the psychological effects. The UN Human Development Index, which ranks countries by life expectancy, education and standard of living, places Sierra Leone 177th out of 177. Twenty-eight per cent of children die before reaching the age of ...”

“... scientific discovery as inherently irrational and not subject to planning or organisation, but it may be thought that more than romanticism or nostalgia was involved. Clearly the images and consequences of goose-stepping soldiers and chanting crowds were still vivid for the postwar generation, and what managers of corporate science were urging as the ...”

“... masterminded the genocide of 1975-79. Coming 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the trial may seem a bit late. The five Khmer Rouge suspects facing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes – the former president, Khieu Samphan; the deputy secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, Nuon Chea; the prison camp commander Kaing Guek Eav; and ...”

“... given specialism. It is, of course, Bragg himself who manages this by standing proxy for us: he may well have read widely on the given subject of the week, but he chivvies away at the crusty academics until they become dehiscent and disgorge their generative pellets of knowledge. On a recent voyage around A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he asked ...”

“... all for authenticity but it can’t begin to hold a candle to the human gift for playacting. That may be the only authentic thing we ever do.’) When the narrative valency of a novel is low or obscure, the term ‘meditation’ is often bestowed on it, lowered like a calming hand onto our brow (‘Oh, so that’s what that sense of aimlessness is – it’s ...”

“... but the clean structural lines of indignation keep shading off into the real world. Burt may be angry with his father, but he’s never going to get the reparation he wants for his childhood; especially not when it’s late at night and Roger’s forgotten the name of his hotel. Because earlier versions of the stories have already been ...”

“... leaves the subject free to accept or reject other ‘more saturated Jewish forms’. The person may choose to give it further attributes – religious, nationalist, communitarian, cultural and so on. But none of these Jewish shapes – which depend on basic choices since they can be assumed or renounced – can rightfully claim the allegiance of an ...”

“... of being the odd woman out in a number of studies of the poets of the New York School. The group may have been a chimera (in John Ashbery’s words, ‘we happened to be friends’), but the label – borrowed from the abstract expressionist painters in their circle, and marketed through Donald Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry – has somehow ...”

“... and study of the medieval Hindi Epic of Pabuji, is the latest to take up the challenge. He may escape the curse because his version is incomplete: though it spans the entire text, he has translated only 11 per cent of the Sanskrit, bridging the translated passages with detailed summaries. Half the book is translation, half summary. He covers the ...”

“... like people, and many of which, in the way of fables, have human hands and animal feet. There may also be signs of the hard life of a schoolmaster in his distinctly clerkly writing. His extended versions of Aesopian fables (which were standard schoolroom texts, used in Latin lessons) conclude with morals which suggest a teacher diligently reminding his ...”

“... conflict under control thanks to his own prestige and irreplaceability. This was not as easy as it may look in retrospect. Not the least problem was Stalin, always suspicious of those beyond his reach, who in 1951 proposed to kick Togliatti upstairs to head the new Cominform, the Communist Information Bureau, far from Italy. Probably he had in mind a more ...”

“... racism led him to defect to the Haganah, the Jewish People’s Army led by Ben-Gurion. (He may also have been uneasy about being part of an organisation that was attacking British soldiers in Palestine when his brother Werner had died in 1941 as a British commando in Ethiopia.) Avnery’s teenage affiliation with the Irgun inoculated him against the ...”

“... by reference to his youth, being imposed on his rule. He therefore had to start all over again. In May 1389, aged 22, he declared that he was an adult and intended to rule as one. In practice, Fletcher argues, what emerged in the next few years was a consensual regime that accepted and performed ‘Richard’s manhood through the household hospitality and ...”

“... the lethally effective ‘invisible war’ waged against Iraqi civilians between August 1990 and May 2003 with the full authority of the United Nations and the tireless attention of the US and British governments. As an example of carefully crafted callousness this story offers a close parallel to Britain’s German exercise. In both cases, sanctions were ...”