“... as babies. There were, it seemed, patterns and cycles to disadvantage. Around the same time David Barker began to show the ways in which nutrition during pregnancy had long-lasting effects not just on babies’ growth, but also on their risk as adults of developing heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Barker argued that to improve the health of the next ...”

“... Catholicism was especially complicated. Since he hated the way that foreign monarchs exploited young Swiss men as mercenaries, he saw the pope as an ally against mercenary service; eventually, he accepted an annual pension from a grateful Vatican. Then came the moment in 1520 when this income became an embarrassment, because his struggle to find a new way ...”

“... the whole world more barbarous than that custom of these coasters in the west of England.’David Cressy, a historian of early modern Britain, wants to rescue these customs from such condescension. Coastal folk were not the immoral ‘wreckers’ of 18th-century myths, luring ships onto rocks with false lights; nor were they the proletarian heroes of ...”

“... Tory gents quite unrepresentative of the masses who played the game. McKibbin recounts how the young Tom Graveney (a Player) dared to congratulate David Sheppard (a Gentleman) on his century, and even called him ‘David’. Basil Allen, the Gloucestershire captain, rounded on Graveney ...”

“... are social means of inducing us to take pleasure in the happiness of others. Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson are clear that there are two notions of altruism, as well as two challenges to its possibility, stemming from quite different sources, but their wide-ranging book is intended to tackle both. They begin with biological altruism, offering their ...”

“... about the links between the political and cultural histories of the USA during this period, but David Stowe, who teaches American Thought and Language at Michigan State University, is, to my knowledge, the first writer to have attempted a systematic history of the relationship between jazz and New Deal America. The most immediate impact of Roosevelt’s ...”

“... histories had a separate genesis, and were intended for a very different purpose. W.T. Couch, the young head of the University of North Carolina Press, and soon to be director of the FWP for the south-eastern region, wrote to Alsberg in April 1938 proposing that the Project record ‘life histories of tenant farmers and their families’. But he wasn’t ...”

“... hour – and he hasn’t had a braver one since – it wasn’t all that brave: he was only a young member of the Illinois state legislature. Had he been on the Senate floor with Clinton, Kerry and Edwards he might not have been so bold. The other thing Obama is known for is his memoir, Dreams from My Father, which was first published in 1995, four years ...”

“... and he was 55. I was twenty when I started sitting for him. I was a very romantic, self-conscious young woman. My voluptuousness (as Lucian described my curves) gave me a maternal air. I offered the notion of comfort to Lucian, which he felt badly in need of. But the intimacy that evolved between us was a challenge for him. He was threatened by it. He told me ...”

“... talking about Georgia,’ Zurab shouted. God, not more Kakheti red wine? A thin young woman with an escort of men in black leather jackets came over to give him a kiss. ‘Know who that was? Edward Shevardnadze’s granddaughter. She’s in TV news. And you know who directed that fantastic shot – the look on Shevy’s face as Misha ...”

“... across the panorama of blight, wheel-hubs for discuses. Trail of the Spider by Anja Kirschner and David Panos announced itself as a Situationist spaghetti western shot on Hackney Marshes; where, the makers assert, the land-grab expansionism of the Old West ‘collides with suppressed history’. Range wars erupt along ‘a vanishing frontier, swarming with ...”

“... but nor has he come across one where it isn’t controlled. Suppose Colin Spencer was a young member of the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea, and made in the flesh the blunder that he makes in language when he describes them, of confusing active and passive in an oral act of sex. Suppose, to be brutally frank, that he blew when the cultural ...”

“... of Late Victorian social reform. At this stage, one of Toryism’s least secret weapons was the Young Conservative organisation. Anthony Bailey, then a schoolboy in Hampshire, recalls: ‘I did a number of things purely because they provided a way of meeting girls. I joined the local branch of the Young Conservatives for ...”

“... get carried away beyond the merits of an originally sound case. Why, he goes on, do writers like David Pryce-Jones want the Parisians to have behaved like the people of Warsaw? It is certainly true that, as a result of their rising, the inhabitants of Warsaw managed to get their city largely razed to the ground. If Hitler had had his way, Paris would have ...”

“... full of villains – Catherine de Medici and the Earl of Moray – and gentle playmates for the young queen. They are full of serious historical research and wild, passionate moments of self-abandon. There are marvellous scenes in the first book, most of the fun provided by the virile Bothwell:Bothwell came to the queen’s apartment and he stood on the ...”