“... irrelevance) of constitutional reform as an issue during it. This part of the book is like reading a bunch of Sunday newspaper articles – which would not matter too much if there were some deeper structure, but there is little or nothing in an analytical vein. Barnett takes us back to the recent past, not to explain it but rather to relive and (he ...”

“... his retirement without his having agreed to it – but Prisongate will make uncomfortable reading for ministers. It is a vivid and at times idiosyncratic account expressive in equal measure of personal frustration and moral outrage. Despite differences in tone and style, the book has striking parallels with Lewis’s. Both men were outsiders to the ...”

“... But then, noticing a fire fed by two peasant women, he approaches and tells them the story of St Peter, also seeking warmth on a bitter night; they break down and weep at Peter’s denial of Christ and Peter’s own tears at his betrayal. What had occurred in Palestine 19 centuries ...”

“... the United States and Israel), which takes up almost half the book, should be compulsory reading for everyone who has ever expressed an opinion on the subject. Yuri Slezkine dedicates the book to his grandmother: not the Russian noblewoman who, despite having ‘lost everything she owned in the Revolution’, ‘at the end of her life … was a loyal ...”

“... shadow chancellor, after an alleged leak of sensitive information had impugned the probity of both Peter Thorneycroft, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Oliver Poole, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, ‘with his vast City interests’. Poole naturally insisted that his name be cleared, and the resulting Bank Rate Tribunal found that there was ...”

“... For the last six months, a Scot reading the London papers, or watching London-made political TV shows, could only conclude that a sharp dislike of Scots and Scotland is spreading across South Britain. The reports suggest a bout of Scotophobia without parallel since the violently anti-Scottish mood of the English mob in Lord Bute’s day ...”

“... does it mean for you?”’ This risks an interpretative solipsism, even if ‘curative reading’ is meant to be ‘a collaborative process’, and Bucknell ends with a glance towards ‘online technologies’ and ‘personal anthologies’ culled from the web in acts of ‘self-curation.’ Other books, such as Can Poetry Save the Earth?, Earth ...”

“... were another important influence. The first half of the Key of Solomon makes for thrilling reading, in part because the intensity of the ritual increases dramatically with each attempt at summoning. The magician is instructed to stand at the centre of his laboriously prepared magic circle and recite the first conjuration. If nothing happens, the ...”

“... the establishment even more than the monarchy. By printing what the rest of the world was already reading, the Week became indispensable during the idiotic weeks when the British press was gagging itself and pretending it had never heard of Mrs Simpson. Lord Mountbatten, who shared Cockburn’s contempt for Baldwin’s politics, apparently urged the king to ...”

“... But it would take a writer of rare skill – which Nguyen is not – to make it compelling reading. I once knew someone who competed in national fireworks championships, which turn out to involve all sorts of arcane rules to help determine who is best at lighting up the night sky. The YouTube channel to which he directed me so I could watch his ...”

“... In looks, this Odyssey is often reminiscent of other 21st-century screen ‘epics’, not least Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The visit to the Land of the Dead reminded me of the excursions beyond the Wall in Game of Thrones. At the end of the film, which draws heavily on Tennyson’s poem ‘Ulysses’, a character sets out to ‘sail beyond ...”

“... have been victims of injustice: Larry Flynt, Daniel DePew and, at the heart of Unwanted Advances, Peter Ludlow, a philosophy professor at Northwestern University, who was charged under Title IX with inappropriate sexual behaviour (in one case rape) by two students, and forced from his job. One of his accusers had been a first-year in his class, the other a ...”

“... to maintain social, political and economic inequities’; and mandating that schools review reading lists whenever a parent complains. Recently, one school in Florida restricted access to ‘The Hill We Climb’, the poem Amanda Gorman read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, after a parent complained that it contained ‘hate messages’.DeSantis is an ...”

“... are 2350 letters in the first five volumes of the Gesammelte Briefe). It was, one feels reading this collection, the way she spoke to others and to herself. She was also a polyglot, writing in Russian, Polish, German and English. An earlier collection of 1979, Comrade and Lover, edited by her biographer Elzbieta Ettinger, had the advantage of ...”

“... make it sound as if animals talk to them, but most often that is probably shorthand for an expert reading of animal placements in and movements across the ouija board of the world, just as closely watched sacrifices might be said to manifest a ‘word (logos) from Zeus’. At the most ancient oracle, the oracle of Zeus at remote Dodona in the direction of ...”