“... Even the undemanding reader who is nodding these assertions into his mind and out again may be held up by the next one: ‘the most complete and perfect example of the former is the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford: a Parthenon-in-the-round, presenting a perfect façade in all directions.’ The circle of the Radcliffe Camera, like the colour circle, one ...”

“... but on certain issues where he appears to claim originality there is a curious convergence. This may just be accident, but I feel it deserves a mention. But it isn’t just the works of hard-nosed professional gentile anthropologists that are ignored: Jewish authors get similar treatment except at odd moments when they happen to have said something that fits ...”

“... of personal satire’. Wrangham was less squeamish. He retained a manuscript of the poem until May 1822, when he approached William Blackwood seeking publication of ‘some splendid fragments’ to which he had contributed as ‘a very humble adjunct’ to the principal author: ‘a Friend of mine who now ranks in the very foremost of the poetical ...”

“... by vaccines. If your antibodies block Spike, you block the virus – and if Spike has mutated, it may have become better at dodging those antibodies. Delta has been the most vicious variant so far, with a Spike that allows it to enter cells more efficiently and brush off some antibodies. The strange Spikes of Epsilon, Zeta, Eta etc all passed by without great ...”

“... Degas and Manet were making transcriptions of Velázquez’s Infanta Margarita at the time. Or it may be symptomatic of the French interest in the English pastoral. Delacroix visited England in 1825, meeting both Lawrence and Richard Parkes Bonington; the trip inspired his outdoor portrait of Louis-Auguste Schwiter, which Degas later bought for his private ...”

“... net zero carbon emissions by 2050 was added to the Climate Change Act. This move, made by Theresa May shortly before she resigned as prime minister, was strongly supported by the Conservative Environment Network, whose members now include half the MPs on the Tory back benches. But since COP26, loud complaints have been coming from a small group of Tory MPs ...”

“... statutory underpinning; but what the House of Commons has just agreed to put on the statute book may not be the underpinning that is required. The parliamentary and press brouhaha has been about setting up an independent panel with the task of ensuring that a voluntary regulator, though established by the very bodies and individuals it is to regulate, will ...”

“... the activity around the anti-Putin protests of the winter and early spring of 2012. A rally on 6 May in Bolotnaya Square, not far from the Kremlin, ended with some pushing and shoving between police and protesters. In the months that followed, the government tightened the screws. Lebedev was arrested in October 2012. In April this year, he was the first to ...”

“... her, Tim Heald nevertheless persuaded a publisher to commission him to write another one. She may have been, as he says, ‘a classic also-ran, second best’ and finally ‘a sad and enfeebled elderly woman in a wheelchair’, but Heald based his argument for yet another biography on the view he claims the world has had of her since her death as ‘a ...”

“... now comfortably immersed in the political consequences of the result – the tenor of a Theresa May government, the pressure on Jeremy Corbyn – and lawyers have been called on to consider the status of the referendum vote and the technicalities involved in triggering Article 50. But there has been very little in the way of constitutional analysis beyond ...”

“... instances, age discrimination and disability discrimination, in which even direct discrimination may be justified. Indirect discrimination, by contrast, may always have a legitimate basis that outweighs its damaging effect. Industrial safety, for instance, or administrative competence ...”

“... At one point he mentions a notion, derived from the Hellenistic geographer Hipparchus, that there may be humans living as far south as the equator, a realm that, for him, was as inaccessible as an alien planet. But then he turns aside from speculation: ‘Even if these parts are inhabited, as some suppose, they nevertheless form … a lived-in world that is ...”

“... did the same, but there was no response and the Jumbotron remained in place until Thursday, 2 May. ‘I have to put a trigger warning in my syllabus when I teach Margaret Atwood,’ one colleague said, ‘or the university will discipline me. But we all have to listen to this for days?’ The last few years of mealy-mouthed catering to both student ...”

“... comfort. But it takes us away from the question of how to avoid the worst in the here and now. It may be true that Democrats in their current configuration cannot constitute a truly progressive governing bloc. It may also be true that, without that bloc, many ambitious reforms will be thwarted whenever they do gain ...”

“... magnificence of the Wallace Collection (then about to open). Some of the objects at Poynton may have been treasured for three or four centuries, but the old Venetian velvets, the chests with ormolu mounts (‘brasses that Louis Quinze may have thumbed’), many of the old chairs and cabinets, the ‘panels and the ...”