“... which jumped around all over the place when he talked – which was a great deal of the time’. David Gascoyne described in his journal in 1936 how Jennings dominated a meeting of the English Surrealists, ‘as usual … boiling over with energy and excitement’. He reported, too, the scene when Jennings and Tom Harrisson met to discuss the formation of ...”

“... Apsley (1616-83). The poem described by Lee as ‘rarely accessible’, now easily accessible in David Norbrook’s modern spelling edition, offers according to Norbrook ‘a particularly strong corrective to the conventional view that literature after 1660 became firmly Royalist’, for it is entirely informed by the religious and political ideals of ...”

“... ever known rolled into one: Barnum & Bailey to James Brown, Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Temple, and David Blaine, and Peter Pan, all the way back to Neverland. We want to see him as pop’s greatest distortion of human nature, which he may be, but isn’t he also the most interesting person on the planet? Jackson’s mother, Katherine, a Jehovah’s ...”

“... magic as a part of life: potentially dangerous but certainly efficacious, an essential, everyday means of getting things done. A good-luck charm, a visit to the shaman, a love spell, a holy talisman, a lock of hair, a photograph of someone you love: who truly believes such things are without meaning? But does any of it really work?A sceptic could, of ...”

“... were published separately, Verne conceived of them as a single unit. This new translation by David Coward and William Butcher, with an introduction and extensive notes by Butcher, brings both novels together under the title Journey to the Moon. Like many in Europe, Verne was fascinated by the progress of the American Civil War, and especially by the new ...”

“... the elect separated out from the reprobate? Even ‘Calvinism’ was ticklish. As David Hall points out, not all Calvinists shared the same eschatology, disagreeing about what happened to souls after death.The question of whether to award the capital ‘P’ or not remains a subject of contention among historians. For Hall, a history professor ...”

“... There is a great difference between trying to figure out what a poem means and trying to figure out which interpretation of a poem will contribute to the toppling of patriarchy or to the war effort. Until recently the assertion of this difference would have been superfluous, but in many circles it has come to be an article of faith that the idea of a distinctively literary system of facts and values is at best an illusion and at worst an imposition by the powers that be of an orthodoxy designed to suppress dissent ...”

“... the Paris Review, McSweeney’s and the New Yorker. He is also a journalist, specialising, like David Foster Wallace, in first-person-singular expeditions into curious reaches of American culture. Tower’s non-fiction adventures have included a bicycle odyssey along the New Orleans levee a year after Hurricane Katrina, a search for a possibly extinct ...”

“... conversation with a senior cabinet member who has decided not to contest the election, which means he will have to stand down come the reshuffle in a few weeks. ‘I’m in a job I love,’ he says, ‘but I can’t go on.’ He added: ‘Forcing Tony Blair out was the stupidest thing we ever did.’  Whole place sunk in gloom. Pleasure at the latest ...”

“... of deadly pounces – is frequently deployed in an unsisterly manner. Take The Girls of Slender Means (1963): Dorothy’s hips were 36 and a half inches; her bust measurement was only 31, a fact which did not dismay her, as she intended to marry one of three young men out of her extensive acquaintance who happened to find themselves drawn to boyish ...”

“... for GP training to more than eight for neurosurgery. Some programmes are ‘run-through’, which means you start straight away, but most require two more years of core training (another four or six placements) before you apply for jobs as a registrar. You can be well into your thirties before becoming a consultant, even later if research breaks and parental ...”

“... which sets an outer limit on the right to life. Lethal aggressors who cannot be stopped by lesser means are liable to lethal attack, and this does not violate their right to life so long as they remain a threat. Killing in self-defence is distinct from execution, the killing of someone who is no longer a threat as a punishment for past conduct. It is also ...”

“... message to CIA agents that ‘the most important thing is to avoid false positives … even if it means a few true positives slip through.’ He made the same argument a few years earlier to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: ‘With regard to counterterrorism operations in general, and the el-Masri matter in particular … the scale tips decisively ...”

“... law generally prevails over democratic discontent in spite of adverse electoral consequences. David Cameron must have looked on in envy: he’d tried to talk tough on immigration without any authority to reduce Britain’s openness to southern Europeans. Merkel meanwhile profited from continuing to talk up German openness while having ensured that Germany ...”

“... on a stock image developed over centuries, by painters especially. Brueghel in the 16th century, David Teniers in the 17th, and Joseph Wright in the 18th, all painted grimy scenes of reclusion and penury, with hints of mad obsession and radiant wonder. Cornelis Pietersz Bega’s alchemist, from 1663, adds pathos to the mix: were it not for the delicately ...”