“... Maison du Pastel in the Marais, bought some Henri Roché crayons ‘from two ancient sisters who may have served Degas’ and determined to ‘draw better than any Jew who ever lived, as a riposte to my anti-Dreyfusard master’. Degas was one of his favourite antisemites, Kitaj wrote; the others were Pound and Eliot.Pastel, particularly the crumbly Roché ...”

“... have very wide participation, are primarily a goad to legislative action. But successful campaigns may also provoke legislative repression, even beyond the recent draconian restrictions on physical protest. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a deliberate echo of the peaceful campaign against apartheid South Africa, is explicitly targeted by the ...”

“... planet’s surface. As the Moon moves in its orbit, the shadow moves rapidly along a track that may be only a few miles across. Observers within this path of totality see the Sun completely obscured. Those on either side see a partial eclipse, with the Moon covering only part of the Sun’s disc.If the Moon orbited in the same plane as the Earth, there ...”

“... and Louis XI. The broader Renaissance interest in Classical coins, cameos, medals and medallions may also have been a factor.Precisely when, and where, the miniature first broke free of the manuscript page is also unclear. What is not in doubt is that, by the mid-1520s, free-standing circular busts of royal sitters in watercolour on vellum, and encased in ...”

“... for today’s royal women even at the height of summer. Antiquated traditions of court dress may have provided a semblance of stability as George III suffered from his periodic bouts of ‘madness’ and revolutions raged in America and France. But when George IV eventually dispensed with his mother’s old hoops, the ladies at court must have breathed a ...”

“... of a straight red card, or a case of mistaken identity. The IFAB guidelines state that VAR ‘may assist the referee only in the event of a “clear and obvious error” or “serious missed incident”’ and that it must not be seen to ‘re-referee’ the game. The on-pitch referee is still the law: the video assistant referee can’t make a ...”

“... explosive blacked goods. Consider – and I fear that this is precisely what the House of Commons may have to do for many hours in the coming months, and, heaven help us, years – the hazards and logistics of supplying the Falklands from Britain. It would not be a question of the occasional supply ship. There would have to be convoys. Why should we suppose ...”

“... was that the very first thing you should do when you see a tradition is to ask what relevance it may have today, to query it, to ask why, to wonder whether the good reasons of two centuries ago still apply now.’ Yes quite – and that no doubt is why the text tells us of the grandfathers, the uncle and the brother of the wife of one of his ...”

“... selling his dirty ‘athletic supporters’ and ‘Verbal Abuse Tapes’. Joel’s customers may be gay but he himself is not, as Mimi realises when his girlfriend, Nanette, shows up. (‘I knew he wasn’t a homosexual. I just knew it.’) Nanette takes Mimi to the Hellfire Club, a notorious downtown S&M haunt, where she passes a newly skinny Potts who ...”

“... and rose oil for treating scars and crushed lilies for venomous snakebites. This list of plants may have extended beyond those found in the monastery garden, but locals still call Reichenau the ‘Gemüseinsel’ (‘vegetable island’), and claim that its horticultural tradition dates back to the Middle Ages.Walafrid’s most ambitious project, if the ...”

“... is a workers’ rights advocate who was first arrested in 2019. She was arrested again in May 2022 with her husband and accused of conspiring with two French tourists whom the Iranian government had detained as spies. Her family heard nothing for forty days. Later, she told them that she had been held in solitary confinement and harshly ...”

“... They also make us vulnerable to loss: ‘In valuing, we give hostages to fortune, and fortune may be cruel. Only a person who valued nothing could achieve emotional invulnerability.’ But to Scheffler, the choice is clear: the radical detachment recommended as an escape from vulnerability is an escape from life itself. Attachments don’t only give our ...”

“... speech to the Knesset, or at least the part quoted here, wasn’t widely reported. I see why. It may have been (strange times we live in) a case of genuine media revulsion. Readers need the newsroom to skim off obscenities. But it’s hard to imagine the Murdoch boys having an attack of good taste. No doubt fear of the oil-slick charge of antisemitism was ...”

“... two pictures on the wall behind him in the portrait, strange emblems that seem superimposed and may have been painted by another hand. In an essay on the painting published in 2010, Tim Wilks points out that in most respects the portrait fits the model of the recently established Venetian chamber portrait, with a half-length sitter and a covered table ...”

“... No one knows for sure why the Chinchorro began to mummify their dead, but scholars believe it may have been a response to high mortality rates, caused by the extreme desert environment and the presence of natural arsenic in the Camarones River. Miscarriages were common, and children often died young. I spoke to Bernardo Arriaza, an expert on the ...”