“... Darwinism. The fossil record shows that the Genesis version of creation is manifestly wrong if read literally, and one is left either questioning the authority of the Bible or recognising that it is a prolonged exercise in metaphor – and as such open to endless interpretation. Moreover, it is difficult for a committed Darwinist to view humans, who form ...”

“... The word ‘meme’, popularised by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, has recently gained entry into the OED as ‘an element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation’. But the idea that culture is transmitted by imitation and learning in a manner analogous but not reducible to natural selection has been around for a long time, and many other terms have been used in describing it ...”

“... from the age of 18 you will, on average, be 700,000 years old before you win the jackpot, and if Richard Branson succeeds in his bid for the People’s Lottery you’re more likely to be a million. The newsagent in question is on Willesden High Road, where every shop that isn’t a newsagent is a takeaway. The streets of low-rise housing go on for ever and ...”

“... he feels ‘both homicidal and suicidal’. He means it, too. All this makes his Diaries a strange read, because they are interesting, indeed fascinating, in many of their details, yet draining and demoralising in their cumulative effect. Reading this book is like standing listening to someone ranting and jabbing their finger in your chest, for hours, but ...”

“... and found he was good at it, meticulous and with a keen eye for detail. Working with the printer Richard Clay and Sons, he was able to match all details of the original pamphlets, with the exception of the paper stock. His versions, he boasted, were ‘as exact a representation as it has been found possible’, with each ‘printer’s error, dropped letter ...”

“... was founded on a crime (he deposed, imprisoned and some would say caused the death of his cousin Richard II, who had once been his playmate). Caught between self-command and the most crushing self-doubt, Walter knew how to rise to this part and bring it down in the same breath. The king is wan with care and insomnia – he is guilty. He is also ...”

“... as he was to the antiquities, though not in a way that pleased everyone: as his fellow traveller Richard Chandler wrote in the journals he published a decade after their return to England, ‘several of the Turks murmured, and some threatened, because he overlooked their houses; obliging them to confine or remove the women, to prevent their being seen from ...”

“... by Al Alvarez’s little piece, ‘Doctor in the House’, which turns out not to be a homage to Richard Gordon (sadly), but a two-and-a-half-page chat about the problems of getting his house redecorated. Mr Alvarez’s wife makes no fewer than seven appearances in this brief narrative, yet her name is not mentioned once: this in spite of the fact that the ...”

“... clear, the Scots, Irish and Welsh. This means that when he speaks of the British Empire, we should read ‘English’. His own Murray forebears, being however far back Gaelic-speaking Scots, are largely if not entirely exempt from blame for what has happened to the Aborigines. (These latter, of course, are the black allies he speaks of, tenderly, always and ...”

“... distinctive style: though he takes for granted that his readers know the rules, his book could be read with enjoyment by those who have never played. It is occasionally disfigured by grammatical errors, such as ‘who he wished to be monks’, ‘like del Rio ... did’ and ‘having said this, it is necessary ...’, and by the misuse of ‘parameter’ with ...”

“... raising of the standard of living and closer relations between member states. I didn’t read much of the treaty that evening; instead I talked at the bar to a detective I first met at the Ladbroke Arms last summer. The man from Stettin introduced me to him in the days leading up to the Notting Hill Carnival, when he seemed harried by the police ...”

“... It was the name of the lady principal of Somerville College, Oxford, Daphne Park, who has, we read here, a history of an elusive kind in Zambia and the Congo. One or two of the other names on the list I had already come across personally, in a similarly disconcerting way. I remember rather excitedly mentioning to a senior journalist on the Observer that I ...”

“... producer with ‘sadistic’ sexual inclinations, had an ‘incandescent’ affair with a pre-Liz Richard Burton and flirted with Elvis Presley, she might be thought to have quite a lot to offer on the carnal gossip front. But if public notice has seemed to neglect this promising material, it is largely because Bloom shows so little interest in it ...”

“... more striking than the soundtrack. Legend has it that the series was born from a studio memo that read simply ‘MTV cops’, and certainly the episodes often look like music videos, an effect enhanced by guest appearances from Phil Collins, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Miles Davis and many others. But the ...”

“... by a new partner, a new city: ‘I was a slum goddess and in college. He looked something like Richard Burton; I resembled Liz. It was, in feeling, as crummy and tortured as that.’ Weird Fucks is a youthful book – people drift in and out of one another’s lives and beds, they live in bars and cafés, they move countries easily, packing up their ...”