“... the likelihood, the certainty, will have been communicated to death, and being stood up may feel like a loving reprieve. ‘Sorry, I’m late.’ It must be one of the most popular sentences in the world, but what does it mean? Is it, a. ‘I regret having given you the impression that my time is more important than yours, but don’t hold it ...”

“... Desnoes to change the title of his novel after the movie came out, and we can begin by asking what may happen when a technical term from international economics is used as an instrument of cultural or psychological diagnosis. A few instances, to set the scene. For Sergio, Cuba is ‘this underdeveloped island’. It is ‘one of the signs of ...”

“... he assembled, done by the insane, the reclusive, the deeply disadvantaged and ecstatic. They may well hold the visitor’s attention in a way no Paris past master is likely to. Dubuffet would have sympathised. Perhaps there were moments in his studio when he looked at the world of non-art with which he had surrounded himself and thought he had a chance ...”

“... sail. Arthur Beale is now an online chandler, though pop-ups and even a proper shop outside London may still be on the cards. Good news for sailors, but not for window shoppers and lunch break flâneurs in Central London. I already miss the imperturbable mannequins with their enviable sea legs, the barometers and clocks in brass casings, the bulkhead ...”

“... is no evidence of any benefits. The temptation to try anything is strong. Mysterious white liquids may be expensive but, according to the Daily Mail, they lead to ‘Mayonnaise Miracle Babies!’ The costs of add-on tests and treatments are seldom explained upfront, and it’s not made clear that many are pointless. Blood tests to count the number of NK cells ...”

“... travel far from here.’ Fragile things are treasured without flinching from the realities that may destroy them, as ‘the long blunt teeth/of the deer’ grind up the hairlike seedlings that grow from the pine cone.Benson’s most recent collection, Vertigo & Ghost, which won the 2019 Forward Prize and is republished this month (Norton, £19), develops ...”

“... overpriced and underwhelming software until there’s no space left on your computer or phone, it may look less like a positive feedback loop and more like a vicious circle.Another thing about software is that ‘there’s no regulatory agency,’ and an ‘imperfect’ product will get ‘feedback’ from ‘enthusiastic’ customers (that’s one way of ...”

“... shelter’. These experiments in rewilding will remain in place until the end of October, and may return next year, weathering in harmony with the buildings they ...”

“... one of the more ‘real’ characters in the film, and K says she is ‘real enough’ for him, we may wonder where this is going. Perhaps electric sheep, weary of mechanical physicality and borrowed memories, dream of phantasmagoric androids, and humans don’t make it at all into the final ...”

“... and house sparrows at that!’ But it is from Carrigskeewaun that he tends to begin. His volumes may then dip back to the experiences of the Great War, in which Longley’s father fought (in a kilt, we are told). Those evocations of war – some worthy of Isaac Rosenberg, some eerily funny – often mingle with the third imaginative centre of Longley’s ...”

“... It grows up to six centimetres long, has a brown or white shell and a speckled body that may range in colour from grey to orange. In sheltered bays, these molluscs settle into fine, soft mud or muddy sand, where they mate in undulant chains, half a dozen at once. When disturbed from their orgies, the snails swim away using two broad fins or ...”

“... of atom bombs, magazine ads and cheesy bondage photos. Goodman’s poster for the Doom Show, which may have been the best thing in it, is at the Grey Art Gallery, spray-painted on a crumpled, fire-damaged edition of a daily newspaper. Lurie, a Latvian Jew and concentration camp survivor, made what he described as ‘no! art’. It has scarcely lost its power ...”

“... means that although deaths in Germany were 5 per cent higher in 2020 than in 2019, the pandemic may be responsible for only a fifth of that increase.In June 2021 Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak published a paper in which they used mortality data from various countries to calculate the excess mortality in each since the start of the pandemic, adjusting for ...”

“... imaginative landscapes.The boy wearing a feathered headdress in Boy in Orchard (c.1952) may well in reality be safe at home, but Gilmore shows him alone in a dark forest. The figure pushing back the curtain in Boy in Window (c.1957) wears the same headdress, while a pair of onions sits just inside the frame, their shoots reaching upwards like ...”

“... The mall is divided into two distinct levels, a result of the building’s complicated history. It may look like a single symmetrical mass of brick, but it’s really two buildings, one from the 1920s and the other from the 1950s, concrete-framed and clad. For the first time, members of the public can now see inside, and the difference between the two ...”