“... summer, we have the heat index, first proposed in 1979 by the Australian environmental scientist Robert Steadman in an article in the Journal of Applied Meteorology entitled ‘The Assessment of Sultriness Part I: A Temperature-Humidity Index Based on Human Physiology and Clothing Science’. Steadman’s index depends on two variables – temperature and ...”

“... is gradually revealed as he tells us with disgust about an American marketing executive with a Robert Redford moustache who is ordering Pimm’s in an irritating manner, spoiling the atmosphere of a pub which Croucher favours. This bounder is called Tony (Croucher’s least favourite name) and kisses a British girl ‘full on the lips’. This is ‘not ...”

“... or even ‘Far out!’ We don’t have the language for it. How do you tell the story of the conquest of space? How do you explain Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the provincial schoolteacher who calculated escape velocity, and proposed liquid-fuelled rockets and orbiting space stations, in the Russia of the tsars in 1898 – five years before the Wright ...”

“... as the unlikely heroes of French history.In The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas, Robert Zaretsky sets out to show that Weil’s ideas can still ‘resonate’ with secular readers today. He wants us to learn from Weil, but he also thinks that, undiluted, she is likely to send us running. His solution is to tone her down. The value of ...”

“... Ireland – if he did point one out. Far from merely straggling in the wake of a very large field, Robert Kee and Frank Callanan restore freshness to the scent by showing how much can still be quarried from close attention to Parnell’s career, not least to the press, which not only made and unmade his reputation but, alongside Hansard, supplied him with the ...”

“... rhyme, can hope to convey both their individual voices and their collective charm. It is here that Robert Kehew’s anthology, Lark in the Morning, succeeds so brilliantly. Kehew’s bilingual edition includes 28 poets and 55 songs, extending from the ‘First Troubadour’, Guillem de Peiteus (1071-1127, but see the cautions above), to the last, Guiraut ...”

“... Massachusetts, ‘a war in which there does not enter the slightest thought or desire of foreign conquest, or of national gain, or advantage’. European diplomats and journalists were less impressed. ‘These high-minded claims fool no one,’ Le Temps asserted. Americans scoffed at such cynicism. ‘It is a misapprehension that we want Cuba, and that we ...”

“... a messianic nationalist movement emerged out of the traditionally moderate Zionist Party. The conquest of Biblical Judaea and Samaria seemed to fulfil prophetic promises and to wed Biblical religion with modern Zionism. For the first time in the history of Zionism, religious elements set the nationalist agenda. Militants from the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the ...”

“... searching for manifestations of genius and high destiny. We do not now expect to find traces of conquest or tyranny inscribed in neural tissue, but are still fascinated by the private lives of the illustrious dead. Adroitly having it both ways, Blackburn feeds that fascination with a wealth of intimate detail while exposing the fallacy that underlies ...”

“... and nothing at all about the antagonism that at times should have dominated his awareness: that of Robert Falcon Scott towards Gran himself. Perhaps during the expedition Gran unconsciously censored that awareness, or perhaps in his youthful naivety he did not even have it. Gran at 21 was the youngest man to join the expedition. The great polar traveller ...”

“... preached idealistic republicanism. The bastions of conservative authority were under attack. Conquest for conquest’s sake was no longer universally viewed as glorious: Alexander’s expedition was sanitised by the Victorians as a crusade to bring Hochkultur to the benighted heathen. Nevertheless, the shibboleths of ...”

“... handles polarities of ideology and thought – between appalling racists, such as Carlyle and Robert Knox, and enlightened liberals, such as Mill and James Mursell Phillippo – but also manages to connect these bodies of thought to the changing circumstances of location, climate, daily life and general social history. Partly because the reader has been ...”

“... many devoted friends at Harvard (as Millier notes), ranging from Octavio Paz to William Alfred and Robert Fitzgerald, and in her writing courses found students whom she admired and liked, both male and female. She also found a new person to love, Alice Methfessel, the administrative assistant at Kirkland House (the student residence where Bishop was first ...”

“... resounded with more anti-English ardour than Surcouf, a submarine launched in 1929 and named after Robert Surcouf, le roi des corsairs, who in his long career seized more than 40 English ships. In 1940, the first shots in what Colin Smith calls ‘England’s last war against France’ were exchanged between the two navies. Before the armistice of 22 June, de ...”

“... search for the North-West Passage, David Livingstone’s fruitless missions to the Zambesi, and Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed mission to the South Pole. All these deaths were indeed flawed: Franklin’s by the large number of people who died looking for him and by the cannibalism to which his desperate companions resorted at the last, Livingstone’s by ...”