“... Kuhn wrote, the notions of ‘“scientific progress” and even “scientific objectivity” may come to seem in part redundant.’ We may ‘have to relinquish the notion’ that scientific change brings scientists ‘closer and closer to the truth’. Scientific knowledge did not accumulate: it moved from moments of ...”

“... from powerful drugs and intrusive procedures. The economic cost is significant: the Health Service may not have funded a woman’s treatment, but it will pick up the bill for multiple births, for premature and low birthweight babies and the continuing illnesses they suffer. The new reproductive technologies are a blessing; a mixed one. They introduce, too, a ...”

“... but show herself twice a fool … a woman is always a woman – that is, a fool, whatever part she may have chosen to play.’In medieval and early modern Europe, philosophers – with help from learned lawyers, medics and theologians – developed what became the dominant view in Western philosophy: that women were neither made for, nor capable of, reasoned ...”

“... shopkeepers, peasants and doctors, whipped into shape in the hills west of Mekele.By the end of May, the tide had begun to turn in Tigray’s favour. Its first major victories over the Ethiopian army took place in June, when the TDF repeatedly routed the Ethiopian army on the road between Agbe and Yechila, capturing large amounts of artillery. This was hard ...”

“... off to found a new company, Shockley Semiconductor. And this is where his mother comes into it. May Bradford Shockley, who grew up in back-country Missouri, was the daughter of mining engineers; in 1904 she had become the only female deputy surveyor of minerals in the US. Her affection for Palo Alto – she had gone to university at Stanford – led her to ...”

“... novels and adapting them for the silver screen. As the song says: ‘Go out and try your luck/You may be Donald Duck/Hooray for Hollywood.’ America had always been a percentage play, and Hollywood was the fabulous embodiment of the nation’s faith in pluck and luck. To a society that fancied itself a Redeemer Nation, the bonanza of stars, paydays and lush ...”

“... as late as 1950. Wilson’s first commercial play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, staged in 1984, may have been experienced by Black audiences as testimony; to white audiences it was still news.In their theatrical dramatisation down the decades from property to personhood, Wilson’s unmoored characters form a kind of fever chart of the trauma of slavery. In ...”

“... little neither gratitude, nor attentions, love, nor justice, nor anything you may set your heart on. Love interest – adoration, & all that kind of thing is usually a failure – complete … it is really a pity to have any ideals in the first place.’ Florence recalled Emma asking her whether she had noticed that Hardy looked like the ...”

“... was no longer an option. Projected applicant numbers for Germany alone surged from 400,000 in May to 800,000 in August. Then came an urgent call from the Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann for help in receiving a large number of refugees making their way on foot along the highway from Budapest towards the Hungarian-Austrian border. ‘I sensed,’ Merkel ...”

“... of these strange organisms that tips into a sort of messianism, a forlorn hope that fungi may ‘save the world’, or at least live on ‘in capitalist ruins’, as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing wrote ten years ago in The Mushroom at the End of the World. They make an appearance in Star Trek: Discovery, crossing space and time and the life-death ...”

“... short-wave radio that Guevara had been captured. ‘He has been wounded,’ we were told, ‘and may not last the night.’We drove for many hours in the darkness to Vallegrande, the forward base of the Bolivian Army in their campaign against the guerrillas, and arrived at nine o’clock on Monday morning. A jittery military commander refused us permission ...”

“... severed long ago. Mother One is elusive, which is perhaps what makes her interesting. There may also be brothers and sisters – and of course there was a father – with whom I have no material connection at all beyond blood. I’m still not sure why blood should matter or why we continue to repeat the platitude about blood and water. When I was ...”

“... by high tariffs from global competition. The European Union has been good to farmers. This may now be coming to an end, for Britain may be about to leave. In 1973, when Britain entered the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU, everyone older than their early twenties could remember food ...”

“... in what were, for Lincolnshire, a strange few weeks in 2007. In a bloodless localist uprising in May, Boston’s mainstream parties were voted out of office by a single-issue movement demanding a new bypass. The Boston Bypass Independents won 25 out of 32 seats at the local elections, wiping out Labour, which lost 11 seats, and leaving the Conservatives with ...”

“... blue, and a diminutive grey-haired person in a drab overall called Janey, a sort of helper who may have been a poor relation. I also remember a plump middle-aged Irish nanny in a white nurse’s cap looking after my baby sister and a taller and somewhat younger nanny in a felt hat who took me to Victoria Park to feed the deer. The new house was at 78 ...”