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“... Murdoch’s descriptive prose: ‘A memory came back to her from her Italian journey, the young David of Donatello, casual, powerful, superbly naked, and charmingly immature.’ And no one could read more than a couple of her novels without recognising that they usually take place in summer, often in a large house, and rarely shift their gaze significantly ...”

“... of heightened religious excitement. This is a problem for those who see religion primarily as a means of social control. Revivals far outnumber the incipient political revolutions they are supposed to frustrate, and perpetual revival appears to be sustainable in a way that permanent revolution is not. One testing ground for theories about the relationship ...”

“... imperial centre disposed of such naval strength that it could prevent by military-administrative means any terminal localisation – a condition only made possible by the technological innovations of 17th-century Europe. Two further conditions suggest themselves: first, that the trans-oceanic migration be on a sufficiently formidable scale that the migrants ...”

“... arranged review coverage for his friends’ books – much of it written by himself, though by no means as mere puffing – and he advised on or actually negotiated contracts for Bulwer, Douglas Jerrold, Hood, Mrs Gaskell, Landor and, of course, Dickens. Like Lewes, Forster also did what it would have been open to him to do at any period: he intervened in the ...”

“... the flightless and the fully fledged, to one function only: masculine power. According to David Halperin, one of the most sophisticated members of this school of thought, ‘the symbolic language of democracy proclaimed on behalf of each citizen, “I, too, have a phallus.” ’ The herms are Hermes no longer, but a symbol of the patriarch, not ...”

“... the egos of the doctors, who view the life they bring into the world as an end that glorifies the means.’ This discussion annoys Natsu. Without thinking she stands up and says: ‘Who can guarantee if any couple is going to stay together? Aren’t these questions relevant to anyone considering parenthood? I believe you also mentioned God, but how does ...”

“... but depth perception was poor – the glass in the helmet was badly positioned.Refraction means that objects appear around a third larger underwater than they do on dry land. And just a few metres from the surface, everything turns blue. In the open ocean, most fish look blue or silver, but in shallow tropical water, well-lit by the sun from ...”

“... dimension of Kafka’s claim, and if we’re in an atheistic mood, we can think he just means ‘very very bad’. In any case, the word certainly also means ‘angry’. The situation becomes more delicate when Rilke, in the ‘Fourth Duino Elegy’, uses the word to say what he doesn’t understand about the ...”

“... to burst its shoddy latch – but in a broader sense, too: the sheer resilience of human drudgery means that, even as we are in the act of unleashing armageddon on the world, we are still mostly thinking about our quarterly performance review. In Borne, the characters eventually return to the ruins of the Company, just as, in Acceptance, the third book of the ...”

“... to fill the gaps. The most obvious alternative – restricting vehicle access to city centres – means that the remaining traffic will move more quickly, but in doing so will kill more people (95 per cent of pedestrians survive 20 mph impacts; only 15 per cent survive those at 40 mph). So, it’s far better to go with the flow, or rather the crawl. Sandy ...”

“... have been dated, as might the assumption that radicalism must be class consciousness by other means, but it was certainly not the case that the majority of 17th-century people were detached or excluded from politics. Indeed, research on the way government really worked – in parishes, towns, counties and the metropolis – indicated the opposite. In ...”

“... is that ‘attacks on the use of race as a concept’ appear to anti-racist writers like David Roediger as a ‘distressingly new’ critique of anti-racism, all the more unsettling because it comes from the left – which Racecraft does. In her brilliant essay of 1990, ‘Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America’ (reprinted in ...”

“... for old times’ sake. Henceforth he would be taken – or left – as a minor though by no means negligible composer who found his true vocation in giving Gilbert’s marionettes brief but memorable moments of being. After Sullivan had ceased to be a problem, Gilbert became one – precisely because he hadn’t been one for the Victorians. Savoy opera ...”

“... by wires to a battery, usually taken from a motorcycle. The bomb can then be detonated by means of a command wire three or four hundred metres long. Alternatively, the bombers can send a signal to the battery remotely by using a car door opener, the control for a child’s toy or some types of mobile phone – which explains why the soldiers who ...”

“... ushered into a compartment, and the door closed behind me. There was only one person in it, which means (I realised later) that it was an attendant’s compartment; on my journey back through the train I had seen the full complement of four people nearly everywhere. It was a woman, probably in her thirties, wearing dyed blonde hair and a navy blue adidas ...”