“... unknown’ means, in principle, that an injunction applies to the world at large. An individual may become aware of the injunction and its terms only after breaching it and placing themselves in contempt of court. What’s more, the terms of the injunctions are vague and unclear: the injunction granted to UKOG, for example, bans people from ‘gathering or ...”

“... account in 1356, that it had a neck ‘twenty cubytes long [about thirty feet] … he may loken over a gret high hous.’ (As Mandeville is himself a fictional appellation for an unknown man, some laxity in measurements is to be expected.) But though so tall, they are hospitable to the small. They have been known to host tiny yellow-billed ...”

“... the burners and cowboys, and the pitiful nuggets of bullion dross scummed by the garimpeiros; they may seem like gleeful devils, but responsibility for their actions lies far higher up the chain. It extends into the darkness of the gallery: London’s smooth and level pavement was raised by the same infernal principles.At the centre of the maelstrom is a ...”

“... no mistakes, just happy accidents’ – are filed here under ‘unintentional’, but while Ross may not have called his style ASMR, he knew what he was doing. The truly unintentional clips are curiosities, but it’s hard to say what exactly connects the rhythmic hum of a sewing machine, the crackle of tinfoil and advertisements for flat-pack furniture ...”

“... something you can make into something. I was just cheesecake really, terribly depressing.’ That may have been true in 1964, but by 1979 she was singing and writing to such powerful effect that she produced this album: indefinable, compelling, elusive and immediate, contradictory and straightforward, moving and puzzling, a vulnerable ...”

“... underwent brain surgery, or insulin coma therapy, or electroconvulsive therapy, or all three. He may have had seizures induced by injections of cardiazol. All these therapies were common in the hospital through the 1930s and 1940s, for illnesses as diverse as schizophrenia and epilepsy. In the film Abandoned Goods (directed by Edward Lawrenson and Pia ...”

“... he made Cardoso foreign minister. Soon he was captivated. Fernando Henrique – from this point we may drop the surname, as Brazilians now do – was everything Itamar was not. Strikingly good-looking, he combines a natural authority with an urbane, faintly saturnine charm. Within a few months, this cosmopolitan prince enjoyed an ascendancy over an ...”

“... in Saigon throughout the war. It is here that O’Brien reveals his take on true facts. While they may be the best stepping stones to discovery and truth, they are, equally often, uncertain guides. The correct path depends on selection and choice. The selections we are provided with and the choices we make from them often lead us in the wrong direction, often ...”

“... Unqualified or low-skilled workers used to be valued for the things they did – work that may have exacted a physical toll, but might leave them enough mental space for the life they wanted to live outside of it. Now they are valued for emotional resilience, and the shortfall is left to Seroxat and Heineken. Would T. be happy to think that his ...”

“... flask of wine by the sleeper’s bedside) and meeting petitioners on the outside of the building.I may be scoffing a bit at the wish for narrative here, but the essential division – into two groups of two – is surely reasonable. Infidelity and Disinganno are pictures of love in an outside world, where Nature has already largely overtaken a fallen ...”

“... rests on the presumption that it is the state of Israel that represents the Jewish people. This may seem a merely descriptive claim, but it carries with it extraordinary, and contradictory, consequences. First, the claim overcomes the distinction between Jews who are Zionist and Jews who are not, for example Jews in the diaspora for whom the homeland is not ...”

“... research he has found nothing to suggest any involvement or foreknowledge on Johnson’s part. You may not believe this. But if you don’t, you won’t believe anything else, so best to stop reading.) It is the mismatch between Johnson’s fate prior to the assassination and his fate in its aftermath that gives this book, the fourth volume of Caro’s ...”

“... May the world​ at least behold a drop, a fraction of this tragic world in which we lived,’ Salmen Gradowski wrote in a letter dated 6 September 1944, which he buried in a flask found near the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau after its liberation. His words supply the epigram for Nikolaus Wachsmann’s history of the concentration camps, KL – the Nazi abbreviation of Konzentrationslager ...”

“... nervous system of the poem and made the things around it shudder. In ‘The Armadillo’, Bishop may have implied a great deal about her own helplessness, but she managed also to suggest that such an implication might be both taken for granted and also fully taken in by the reader and felt. For Lowell, such an implication was precisely what he wished the ...”

“... with her friend and fellow feminist, the historian Sheila Rowbotham, and remonstrating with May Hobbs, the forceful and ambitious leader of the Cleaners’ Action Group: ‘They haven’t got the time to run their own branch, May, never mind their own union,’ Alexander says, and a little later she’s pulling coins ...”