“... standard of sexual conduct than their sisters elsewhere? It is hard to tell. Marsh’s descendants may have censored her journal. Certainly, she let no romantic opportunity pass. The tablecloth spread as usual on the grass, cold fowl and oysters were our repast – sung some songs, danced a reel, and again seated ourselves in our palanquins – the moon was ...”

“... and libricini), which he had used as source material: ten of these are lost. Some of them may yet surface: two entire notebooks were discovered by chance, in Madrid, as recently as 1967, and there have been tantalising but unconfirmed sightings of the lost treatise on light and shade known to Melzi as ‘Libro W’. The collections are ...”

“... context or to understand the sequence of events that led up to it. Even though the American people may not know what has been done in their name, those on the receiving end certainly do: they include the people of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959 to the present), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos ...”

“... thing we have to fear is fear itself’: the phrase, used by Roosevelt in his inaugural address, may have been adapted from Thoreau but the sentiment was authentically his own. Roosevelt’s personal courage and confidence was undoubtedly a major ingredient in the political recovery that followed. His regular informal press conferences and ‘fireside ...”

“... the assistance of the occupation, for which Bush and Blair wanted backdated cover from the UN. In May, at Annan’s urging, the Security Council ratified the Anglo-American seizure of Iraq, voting unanimously for Resolution 1483, which endorsed Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, and pledged the UN to play a ‘vital role’, as requested by the White ...”

“... of the institution. The government’s hope that education will be tailored to individual needs may be a vain one but that is certainly these schools’ ambition. A very close eye is kept on students’ progress, which is constantly measured against presumed norms. Those who do well are publicly recognised: photos of ‘improvers of the month’ are hung on ...”

“... demystification, but the harshness of tone makes his an uncompromising, maverick voice. That may well be a point of honour, like going back to South Africa and turning up his nose at the exiles, but it doesn’t guarantee him a more sympathetic hearing. Time and again the tone stands in the way of the arguments, even the ones you know to be ...”

“... This abstract feature will correspond to some way in which the ‘i’s and ‘j’s vary, but it may or may not correspond to an intuitive human interpretation of the data. Between, roughly, 1990 and 2010 most research in machine learning was focused on statistical techniques such as support vector machines and the attempt ...”

“... editor, an ex-pilot and manic depressive who was fond of women and drink. Maxwell wrote that ‘it may not have been the worst of all possible marriages, but it was not something you could be hopeful about.’ To another acquaintance, they were ‘like two children out on a dangerous walk: both so dangerous and so charming’. When they weren’t hiding out in ...”

“... had been built and so was compensated with several millions – a real-life Ealing Studios plot.11 May. To Weston. Besides the women Mam’s room now has two men, Cyril and Les. Cyril is small and plump with a little secret smile, as if he’s sitting on an egg; Les has a bad chest and does what Mam would once have called ‘ruttles’, i.e. gargles with ...”

“... Ages, ‘some variation of race spread through European languages like wildfire.’ The word may have emerged to describe breeds of animal, but it was soon used to describe people: in Italy, Cooley writes, ‘everything that was bred had a race, and everything had been bred.’In pre-modern Europe, certain species were vested with symbolic ...”

“... from a fairly faithful reading of Dorothy Thompson in the Herald Tribune that she may sail at any minute in order to strangle Neville Chamberlain’.After Hitler’s invasion of Poland, opinion pollsters asked Americans to what extent they were in favour of aiding European democracies. The answer: not much. They were willing for their country ...”

“... he had used when publishing his earliest poems: Incertus. How far back this mindset went we may never know, because, if Reid is correct, Heaney’s childhood letters have been lost. It is already visible in the opening letter of this selection, written to his schoolfriend Seamus Deane in December 1964, when they were in their mid-twenties. ‘Christmas ...”

“... and went to prison twice for robbing banks.– Married her first husband, Matthew Porter, 17 May 2008. Later divorced.– Won the 2010 Iowa Poetry Prize for her grad thesis, A Little Middle of the Night.– Published Bandit: A Daughter’s Memoir with Grove Atlantic (2016).– Married me 11 May 2017.– Founded her ...”

“... à la Mallarmé, and the proliferation, the infinite extension of form à la Wagner and the novel, may coincide and the coincidence result in compositions of original beauty. But the two aesthetics are also very different, and a possible deconstruction of some of Boulez’s notions might begin here. For isn’t it really one thing to make a composition ...”