“... 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 ...”

“... and close relationships with senior figures in the Elizabethan regime, such as William Cecil and Robert Dudley. His activities abroad were instrumental in his appointment as principal secretary to the queen in 1573, which marked the beginning of nearly two decades of virtually uninterrupted activity at the heart of government. Cooper’s portrait necessarily ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... rightly thinking it available elsewhere, but he does publish the touching letter Max wrote to Robert Ross, Oscar’s premier initiator, when he was in New York with his half-brother, the famous impresario Herbert Beerbohm-Tree. A Canadian adventurer and confirmed homosexual, Ross was a remarkable and on the whole a rather good man, who became influential ...”

“... the Nazi leaders. As early as July 1933, with Hitler only just ensconced as German Chancellor, Robert Bruce-Lockhart records conversations between the Prince and the grandson of the former Kaiser, Prince Louis-Ferdinand: ‘The Prince of Wales was quite pro-Hitler and said it was no business of ours to interfere in Germany’s internal affairs either re ...”