“... available, well-used moulds. One of these turned up, somewhat oddly, in the New Statesman, where David Selbourne argued that what had been persistently overlooked was the fact that India wasn’t a country at all, but a sub-continent. This thesis has some truth in it, but there hangs about it an ancient and fish-like smell. It was, after all, a standard ...”

“... not to LSD, but to politics. All that is now less relevant. Thirty-four years of Left Front rule means that the coalition must take responsibility for various transgressions. Among them are the politicisation of institutions, their alleged infiltration by party members or sympathisers; a recalcitrant work ethic, encouraged by militant trade unions; the awful ...”

“... should be ‘exaltation’, although it is hard to be sure. Referring to ‘the historian David Irving’ is like referring to the metallurgist Uri Geller. There were, I think, few ballpoint pens in 1940. On page 160 the idea that the USA passed straight from barbarism to decadence is praised as if it had been conceived by Muggeridge, instead of Oscar ...”

“... Nothing is more striking than the ‘immense, unstoppable relish’ with which Picasso puts ‘the means of illusionism through their paces’ for one last time in the paintings from Céret and Sorgues. Why did he do so? In part, he was reacting to the ‘nerveless academicism’ of his own work at Cadaqués. More important, he was testing the ways in which ...”

“... that ‘the secret’ to Carlsen’s greatness is that ‘it remains a secret,’ whatever that means. During​ the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time watching Carlsen play blitz (five-minute) and bullet (one-minute) chess online. He says he does this to relax and to rejuvenate his ego by thrashing wired bunglers after he’s lost a serious ...”

“... In​ David Hare’s play The Absence of War, the Kinnock-like party leader, George Jones, is a tragic figure. His wit, his passion and his ability to extemporise are gradually extinguished, with his connivance, by a party machine that spends its time trying to out-Tory the Tories. They obey the polls religiously, yet still the voters aren’t ‘churning ...”

“... underwear brand to promote a new bra (an odd choice) and decided to make a pun on tangying, which means ‘an effortless win’ but also carries the implication, via tang, of lying down. ‘Wear the bra and lie down to win with no effort?’ Female netizens took offence and the topic went to number one on Weibo. Lawyers reminded Li that according to Chinese ...”

“... also wrote the dissent, which is unsigned), and again in a recent abortion case.Ginsburg’s death means that the political centre of the court will now probably settle on Justice Gorsuch. He is a more interesting jurist than liberals at first admitted. He recently wrote the decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court held that employees are ...”

“... gentle stroking’ in the dark, with a slow, shared coming down. Men’s infidelity in marriage means little, for they are naturally promiscuous, whereas an unfaithful wife is a wife ready to break off her marriage. The ‘Coolidge Effect’ is the experts’ term for this contrast in sexual attitudes. On a Presidential visit to a farm, Mrs Coolidge asked ...”

“... any Scots from the indictment (though – unkindest cut – he does exonerate one Welshman, David Jones). Worse still for Crawford, Kenner announces, ‘There’s no longer an English literature’: by which he means that, whereas ‘talent has not been lacking’ – on the contrary, ‘good poets are dispersed round ...”

“... founding father, on this side of the Atlantic, of strategic studies: the academic analysis of the means and ends of military force in a nuclear age. This was a field which had been pioneered in the United States by academics who sought to apply mechanistic theories to nuclear war. Howard, by contrast, believed in the empirical study of the problems, enriched ...”

“... but have won the respect of professional critics, who are favoured: V.S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer, David Storey, Paul Scott, Iris Murdoch, for instance. Beyond that it isn’t easy to see much significance in the list – perhaps there’s a nostalgia for the old Empire (Scott, J.G. Farrell, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, plus Nadine Gordimer, Naipaul, and P.H. Newby ...”

“... for burlesque, rather than for the tragic or pastoral mode of the works by Ingres and Manet and David which he takes as his sources. A visit to the Hôtel Salé in the Marais where the Musée Picasso opened a year ago is as exhilarating and depressing as a trip to the Royal Academy exhibition. Here, too, there are masterpieces from the artist’s own ...”

“... accompanied by the devoted Ruth, who is a Moabite and will become the progenitrix of the line of David. This is striking because elsewhere in the Bible all intercourse with Moab is prohibited. Havrelock shrewdly notes that Ruth and Naomi are a reversal of Lot’s daughters, who incestuously engendered the Moabites and their neighbours the Ammonites. Of all ...”

“... in Swarming and the Future of Conflict (2000) by the RAND Corporation’s John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt. Technology, Arquilla and Ronfeldt argue, will soon make it possible for small clusters of loosely organised military units to conduct brief and co-ordinated strikes, then disperse. Message boards, similarly, allow lone hackers to share targets and ...”