“... are only two people in the colonial relationship. But here and there Memmi implies that there may be a third. He hints at this in references to his own biography. Memmi was born into one of those colonial minorities which, by their mere existence, upset the dualism of his theory. Born in the Jewish ghetto of Tunis, to a father of Jewish-Italian origins ...”

“... they would finally intone, ‘we remove all the heavy clouds that surround you, that you may again behold light and sunshine.’ Some months later, to fill the void left by parental death, they would offer him a young woman recently captured from an enemy tribe. The recipient of these demonstrations, for his own part, would know exactly how to ...”

“... Voyaging”.’ These metaphors are too neatly aligned with their meanings. A woman may indeed decide to make alterations to her house after a separation, but the symbolism involved in hollowing out its insides and keeping the front intact is too obvious, as is the business of the German rocket and the German family history or the church overrun ...”

“... in reforming the country’s decrepit constitutional structure. The prime minister’s behaviour may be thought to be aberrant, but it can’t simply be left out of the calculation. The present regime is slowly destroying the Labour Party, and it will not be rescued by a reasonable competence at day-to-day management – any more than the Conservative Party ...”

“... with them an ‘essential sadness’ never to be surmounted. Exile, however positive its outcomes may seem for those countries generous or opportunistic enough to offer homes to top research scientists and famous writers, is not fun for most of those on whom it is visited. Indeed, extreme and even tragic suffering seems to have been the experience of huge ...”

“... the giants celebrated ad nauseam in Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs. Hard though it may seem to associate avian elegance with cumbersome and ferocious behemoths this was the story told by the cladograms, revealed by interpreting the bones of the famous old bird Archaeopteryx unfettered by preconceived notions. That theory has been triumphantly ...”

“... of bees’, large amounts of honey and many, many stains – a preponderance of goo. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but the words fit the subject: you get the feeling that the writing wouldn’t be very different in another language, while wondering whether his next book might not be less good for being better written. ‘Islands’, the first ...”

“... Perceval, however, is named; and his naming is the pivotal event of the romance, whatever more may be to come. The giving of a name, in most of Chrétien’s romances, is what gives shape and structure to a story that otherwise might seem to have as much form as a piece of string with only one end. Enide, who shares the title of her romance with her suitor ...”

“... men test out the route before they themselves set on that adventure.’ Mandeville’s passage may well bring to mind the vagina dentata discussed by Freud, and he also invoked the jus primae noctis, in an article on ‘The Taboo of Virginity’. Freud situated the taboo in the psychology of women rather than men, interpreting it at first as a way for the ...”

“... figures as Abraham Geiger, Nachman Krochmal and Joseph Perl. The historian must select, but one may legitimately query the principles of selection that lead to such omissions. The policy seems all the more strange given the publishers’ claim that the book portrays the Jews as more than ‘mere objects of the history and intentions of others’. A random ...”

“... tease Timmy, puffing their privileged backgrounds to make him feel uncomfortable. But his devil-may-care approach on the course stops the whickering of the other boys. Timmy has the natural balance that distinguishes great players – famously, a six-month-old Tiger Woods could stand upright in his father’s hand – and he shows them up as soon as he hits ...”

“... ancestry. The number of our ancestors increases exponentially, generation by generation. We may have only four grandparents, but go back a few dozen generations and we have more ancestors than the current world population. Our nuclear DNA, inherited from both parents, is a patchwork. Mitochondrial DNA might be inherited from one maternal ancestor, and ...”

“... transformed British political journalism, and has left a mark even today. His true successor may be the violent, undeferential, hugely popular and not unimportant Sun newspaper. But Cobbett’s work and ideas need to be located in a transatlantic and global context. And their political hybridity is something that needs to be explained, not simply ...”

“... him the love he craves. From My Life to the writing of Chartist poems was a shorter step than it may seem. In his search for employment, Jones had approached the Anti-Corn Law League. He had also been keeping political company and made his first public speech at an Anti-Corn Law debate in Willis’s Rooms late in 1845: he was about to become Ernest ...”

“... of seven they were taken from their homes and put into military barracks, where regular anal sex may have been intended to make them grow up to be strong soldiers; once married, they could visit their wives only surreptitiously; they were outnumbered by the servile population of helots, which needed keeping under control; and were faced with the declining ...”