“... Hamilton Stark, Banks describes the type: ‘A rube! A citizen of the provinces, a man whose life may well be incapable of offering posterity a single slice of cheese more than his particular sociology! How mere.’ Banks is not a witty writer, but he is alive to the slapstick of his characters. They tend to smoke (Menthols), and to be a bit bigoted ...”

“... in front of the dome, pillars and banner. Perhaps it is also a vigil for the occupation, which may well be over by the time you read this. By the entrance to the occupied Jeremy Bentham Room are the remains of an earlier vigil, all melted candles and wilting roses, Diana-like, with slogans among the tea lights: ‘Cedric Diggory Was Murdered,’ ‘Albus ...”

“... and France. In the history curriculum of the Soviet Union, the modern world began in 1649. These may have been outsized, unsustainable claims, but they shared common ground with the views of every preceding generation. Britain had been defined by its revolution and each subsequent political, social and religious movement could trace its origins to ...”

“... rebellion’, but according to Amnesty International more than 50 protesters may have been killed when the police and army opened fire on the crowd. The government blamed the riot on ethnic separatists ‘cloaked in religion’ who deceived people into taking part ‘in their plot to destroy national unity and overthrow the ...”

“... Negro in a boat driven by a deaf-mute Indian boy, arriving after dark at the Lakashi village. You may have spotted one or two errors in the previous paragraph. Maybe the factual mistakes don’t really matter – it’s a novel not a textbook – but reading State of Wonder you get the strong impression that, for Patchett, the world outside North America ...”

“... a lot harder at this issue. As it is, there is some reason to believe that Goldman’s heyday may be over. Higher capital requirements and restrictions on trading activities, combined with anaemic economic growth are denting its profitability: in the last three months it lost money for only the second time since going public, and its share price is back ...”

“... full of bankers. 6. They put prices up during the festival. 7. They think they’re great. You may be glad to learn that Crawford’s book is a little more discursive, open-minded and generally responsive to the idea that there might be great things to be said about both cities, but for some reason my eye kept digging out the more deadly quotes. In ...”

“... why so many Pakistanis want to become members of one of the five parliamentary assemblies. On 11 May, having been governed for five years by the PPP, the country voted to replace the filthy rich Zardari and his gang with the filthy rich Sharif brothers and their gang. Many of the parliamentarians seem frightening and powerful figures back home: a land-grab ...”

“... co-author, with Althusser, of Reading ‘Capital’ (1965), but broke with him over the revolts of May 1968: Althusser took the Party line, accusing the participants of ‘infantile leftism’. For Rancière ‘the lesson of Althusser’ (the title of his 1969 critique of his former mentor) was elitist in its theoretical focus on the ‘scientific’ Marx. As ...”

“... much as seeking answers, and some of these possibilities are fascinating, whatever our scepticism may be about the larger project. Robert Nozick is cited (twice) as producing the elegant suggestion that we don’t have to choose between presence and absence, or between Heidegger’s Seiendes and Nichts, since we could have both, eventually (perhaps ‘the ...”

“... as best we can?’ If these are the questions of ‘quiet, gentle, unassuming faith’, we may wonder what is in store for us from the less gentle versions of Christianity. Perhaps Scruton is warning us of something. In Spufford’s version, Christianity, with its insistence on what people are feeling, comes close to sounding like a version of the more ...”

“... driven man and he agonised. His remit was to save an elite. What about the others? At the end of May, 1941, he wrote afterwards, ‘we found that in less than eight months over 15,000 people had come to us or written to us … We had decided that 1800 of the cases fell within the scope of our activities. In other words these 1800 were genuine cases of ...”

“... attitude seems to have caught the public mood recently. The postmodern age of sexual puritanism may be nearing its end; and what better historical model for its transformation could exist than the era that rejected ...”

“... and vegetables. His father and Gage oversaw his exhumation. Of all Gage’s observations it may be the thorny hedge, which like the garden and the nearby wood, have disappeared, rather than the careful notes on art and local customs, that is of most use to history. One aim of the excavation at Hougoumont is to work out why the French with their vastly ...”

“... on women against their better instincts, leading to a ‘cascade of intervention’ that may be damaging for ‘baby’. But when I went into labour and arrived at hospital, late on a Sunday night and in serious pain, a midwife told me to go home and come back when labour was properly ‘established’. There were no doctors to be seen. When I came ...”