“... worst one … Do not revile your fate. Remember that it is sad to be alone; despite anything that may be said or done, a woman has an immense need for affection.’ Berthe now required a new chaperone; her mother inherited the job. Berthe didn’t just need her when painting outdoors, she also needed her when being painted indoors. Manet was to make a dozen ...”

“... an official mandate to pursue an inflation target of 2 per cent), but while interest rate rises may have the effect of depressing economic activity – and even deflating the housing market – there’s a limit to the influence they can have on energy and food prices, when there are real material and geopolitical reasons that those prices are high. There ...”

“... over in academia Prince is still the party tape of choice. Publishing ‘like it’s 1999’ may be variously interpreted, but whatever the resulting book is called, the assumption is the same: the end of the millennium is inextricably linked with apocalypse, the end of the world, and the messianic fanatics who seek to bring it about. And so although ...”

“... Asia and who are most likely to have been the speakers of proto-Indo-European. Their success may have been owed to an efficient economic system involving wheeled vehicles, horses and oxen, and the extensive felling of forests to turn Europe into a steppe-like environment. They may also have brought the plague into ...”

“... cut spending and make the whole Vatican outfit more serious: Most Reverend Eminence, first of all may I beg you to accept my warmest congratulations for your appointment as Secretary for the Economy. Meantime, I am pleased to inform your eminence that the most eminent cardinals are eligible for the following concessions: the purchase of groceries in ...”

“... leave a large space blank, which disturbed the artist. Portraits of Bembo – or portraits that may be of him – abound, some by giants like Titian and others hard or impossible to assign. Commissioning works of art did not exhaust his energies. In his city house in Padua, he created a garden in which he cultivated rare herbs, ten years before the ...”

“... human intelligence, ‘since the superintelligence is better at cognitive work than we are, it may see past the errors and confusions that cloud our thinking.’ That’s hard to argue with, but I can’t help thinking about the influence of computers on chess players. They see past our errors and confusions on the board, and they certainly help human ...”

“... wasn’t the only auto industry executive who could have schooled Nissan in these measures, but he may have been the only one capable of implementing them. Being a foreigner helped, or rather being the right kind of foreigner: neither tall nor blue-eyed (this was apparently appreciated at Nissan), and too indeterminate in origin (born in Brazil, raised in ...”

“... lack of party structures and discipline in Pakistan. The military intelligence service, the ISI, may well have played a covert role in undermining the agreement between Bhutto’s Party and the ANP. But, if it did, its role was only a subsidiary one. In the Pashtun areas at least, whatever the case elsewhere, the election result was genuinely democratic, and ...”

“... lets you know the service sector is really on the up and up. When it does, and if it does, there may be a few more jobs for young people in the suburbs, where so much of the vibrant secondary industry that provided work for their parents – textiles and electronics especially – disappeared years ago. Occasionally, through the haze of immobilism and racial ...”

“... have come close to being selected for England’s test team (though Middlesex’s Owais Shah may get the call-up for this winter’s tour to Pakistan). Is there any other sport in which black players, having overcome years of prejudice and contempt to make the breakthrough to international representation in the 1980s, have gradually been frozen out ...”

“... wolf too often’ about it. A more genuine reason for Britain’s persistence with the Federation may have been the colour of the government at the time. Central African union was not initially a party issue in Britain – ‘multiracialism’ appealed to a broad swathe of opinion – but the Federation’s whole sad life was completed under Conservative ...”

“... Melville – to be present on such occasions; the remotest event, the smallest recorded detail, may have meaning: its inclusion is therefore self-justifying; in any case, Parker, like all great scholars, loves what he knows. He knows the topography of Boston and New York, the evolving social history of a neighbourhood or particular street; he knows the ...”

“... was arrested in 2001 for trying to transport a cache of Kalashnikovs and some explosives which he may have been planning to use in an invasion of northern Kazakhstan, with the intention of declaring a Russian republic there. Brodsky’s poem ‘On Ukrainian Independence’, written in the early 1990s, excoriated Ukrainians for wanting independence from ...”

“... yet again be faced with a lack of diversity in the judiciary. But that is another story.) Some may be fortunate enough to receive free help from aspirant or charitable lawyers. If they aren’t, what should they do? They can represent themselves in court. A recent report of the Bar Council suggests that, in the wake of the cuts, more people are doing ...”