“... Astronaut Scott shoves Astronaut Oates off the steps of the module – ‘I am going up now. I may be gone for some time’ – and blasts off. For Dorothy, this is the end of all romance (‘Goodbye spoony Juney Moon’): the men are unworthy of the Moon. Opening in January 1972 at the Old Vic, Jumpers came two and a half years after the Apollo 11 ...”

“... wheaten bread is not the staff of life.’ Crookes’s apocalyptic vision was widely credited and may indirectly have inspired Haber’s work. The production of cheap synthetic fertilisers permitted by the Haber-Bosch process was a vital ingredient in the sevenfold increase in the world’s food supply during the course of the 20th century and the almost ...”

“... Noise and Bustle you can, to make the whole Town ring of you if possible: So that every one in it may know, that there is in Being, and here in Town too, such a Physician’. One way to make such a noise was to be seen in the fastest and most fashionable medical and literary circles, hoping for a reflected aura, or, at least, for crumbs of patronage to fall ...”

“... might suggest. It is important to understand that constructing what traders call a ‘position’ may involve not buying an asset but ‘short selling’ it: that is, borrowing it, selling it, and later repurchasing and returning it, a perfectly normal sequence in the financial markets. More profoundly, the construction of the replicating portfolio depends on ...”

“... Four more bodies were discovered in the wreck after it was salvaged a fortnight later. It was May before the two remaining members of the crew were washed up and identified. This is another version of what happened, from government documents: ‘The cause of this casualty was either an error of judgment on the part of the tug master or the very temporary ...”

“... must have increased his unpopularity with his jailers. ‘No matter what precautions I may take I am quite certain that these convulsions and spasms, not to mention the physical pain, can be heard as far as the Faubourg St Antoine.’ Sade was always attracted by ‘vice’ and, as he wrote from his cell at Vincennes in 1782, ‘always thought that ...”

“... of methamphetamine would outrank every other manufacturing industry in California. Methamphetamine may be especially in demand of late – one can never know such things with any certainty – but it is only one of many compounds that have been declared illegal over the years: ‘huge’ seizures recently announced featured Ecstasy tablets imported from ...”

“... writes, ‘became a pattern that would allow Jack to pursue a political career . . . Between May 1955 and October 1957, while he was launching his Vice-Presidential and Presidential bids, he was secretly hospitalised nine times.’ Here is Dallek’s depiction of Kennedy’s health at an early point in his Presidency: The bone loss and destruction in ...”

“... improvisation, and the difference between them is well preserved in a story I have yet to tell. In May 1945, when the war came to an end, I was on the headquarters of an infantry brigade, which I had joined just before the Normandy invasion, and which had served me as a haven from the misery of an infantry battalion, for which nothing in my nature, except ...”

“... and Harris wanted to set up ‘an extremely interesting experiment with the Germans’. In May 1940, three German planes on a mission to bomb a French airfield near Dijon went off course and bombed Freiburg. Hitler blamed it on the British and pledged a fivefold revenge. The war of terror was underway. Each side was going to put the other’s ...”

“... surgery there published its Interim Report on the ‘Removal and Retention of Human Material’ in May 2000. A third inquiry is now taking place in Scotland, where the legal apparatus for the investigation of the causes of death is very different. The Scottish Independent Review Group on the Retention of Organs at Post-Mortem published its first set of ...”

“... prostitutes and taking endless shots of dusty people unable to get up off the pavement. I may be alone in disliking this series. At any rate, Cartier-Bresson’s various visits to Mexico were considered fruitful enough to merit a discrete volume (Mexican Notebooks, 1995). But compared to the work of Mexican photographers – Manuel and Lola Álvarez ...”

“... advice not to dance with Mr Darcy by saying, with evident sincerity: ‘I believe, ma’am, I may safely promise you never to dance with him.’ And we know where that leads. Nothing intrigues Austen more than self-deception. She is the most psychologically plausible of novelists largely because her characters’ dialogue is everywhere inflected by their ...”

“... live more honestly through language … The notion of “finding your voice”, simplistic as it may sound, is … a social goal.’ Thus, presumably, the genesis of Outline. The narrator, a writer, travels to Athens to teach at a creative writing workshop. She meets people, they talk to her, sometimes she offers an observation, and that’s it. A frame is ...”

“... official prisons do not, he claims, have the space to accommodate tens of thousands of people. He may be right. Yet imprisoned they have been. So where are they? Having interviewed lawyers, psychologists and former detainees, I have learned the names of sites where torture and ill-treatment are far worse than anything in the official prisons. Inside ...”