“... had been followed by the murder in London of ‘the Italian Boy’, a victim of body traders who may have been serial killers. The New Poor Law, she argued, worked in tandem with the Anatomy Act by herding the poor into workhouses that prefigured Nazi concentration camps. Together, they streamlined the anatomy business and inflicted the ultimate stigma on ...”

“... It helps that the gamer’s proxy is always on a quest – for money, gold, any token that may have valuta if not intrinsic value. The numbers it’s necessary to lay waste to en route to these trinkets inflate according to the classification of the game, as do their character – poisonous spiders, hellhounds, Nazi zombies – and the graphic nature ...”

“... at all times and in all circumstances wrong to take human life, whatever evil-doing the malefactor may have committed, then the time to say so was before Nuremberg and not immediately after. Souhami gives details of those tried and executed at Lüneburg. The trials were conducted by a British military court set up to deal with crimes against Allied ...”

“... democratic competition, rather than violence, was not always realistic.’ Islamist radicals may not be able to force through illiberal legislation at the national level, where they have to contend with moderate, secular, Christian and Hindu opposition, but they have at times been able to dominate local law-making. In Aceh, a version of sharia law now ...”

“... grip on civil society, even in the interests of the ‘modernisation’ it preaches. Someone may have to write a book called Russia in 2013; it might not look very different from ...”

“... Kipling quotation (‘the toad beneath the harrow knows exactly where each tooth-point goes’) may have been apposite, it went along with the lugubriousness that had him signing himself ‘oldtimer’ at 30. He was also president, or some such, of the primary school teachers’ professional association. My father’s father, Fernly Charlewood ...”

“... me.’ Whatever fantasy you can’t act out in real life can be fulfilled in fan fiction. May-December relationships are very popular, as are boys transforming into girls. BDSM has a huge following. But the most common sexual ‘perversion’ is gay sex. On AO3, as of 17 October 2012, ‘roughly four in nine’ works were categorised as M/M. Some ...”

“... these islands. It fitted well with his hatred of revolutionary rationalism across the Channel. It may seem odd to say that Berkeley was wary of abstractions when he produced such a wildly speculative doctrine as esse est percipi, but the truth is that he thought it no more than common sense. It was, he thought, what the man in the street believed too. The ...”

“... of hours of peasants toiling away’. Reno begins to understand that the way things look may mask the way things really are. In the villa, ‘all this beauty led me back to a sense of cruelty, to the people kept out, and those kept in, in the kitchen, the washing shed, the servants’ little stone cottages.’ So when she hears that ‘there was ...”

“... though the main season usually starts in April and if there is stability by then many tourists may well return. Rached Ghannouchi, Nahda’s veteran leader, is a serene figure who projects a gentle smile without parting his lips. He wears an ancient red fez and sits calmly with his hands folded in his lap. He places the revolution that allowed him to come ...”

“... to their sons and the freedom that this new, consumer-driven lifestyle afforded them troubling. It may seem strange now to think of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s as a land of plenty, given how central ‘the Slump’ remains to the national memory of the 20th century. The wretchedness of mass unemployment in places such as Jarrow, ‘the town that was ...”

“... And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. Atwood’s narrator has recently been renamed ‘Offred’, as in ‘Of Fred’, the name of the Sons of Jacob ‘commander’ who regularly attempts to inseminate her, Jacob and Bilhah style, while she lies on top of his ...”

“... was apparently inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. The two cosmic heads – Buddha and spaceman – may be inert but they seem to be watching each other. As you walk past TV Buddha (1974), you glimpse yourself in the background of the video, caught up for a moment in their silent exchange. Nam June Paik’s ‘TV Buddha’ (1974) Works about surveillance ...”

“... the early 1930s, is one example among many: Mr Fitzgerald: If you want to write modest things, you may be able to turn out one collection of short stories … [but] there is just no comparison. I am a professional writer, with a huge following. I am the highest paid short story writer in the world. I have at various times dominated – Mrs Fitzgerald: It ...”

“... and ‘mix in’, but ‘their only goal in life is to cause harm to the United States.’ Mitt may be a dull man, but he’s not crazy. He’s tried to pander to his constituency – for example, assuring a worried voter that under his watch the United States will never relinquish its sovereignty to the United Nations or claiming that we don’t need any ...”