Search Results

“... sometimes spilled onto the pages of newspapers. Although the ‘science wars’ were well underway by 1996, they came to wider attention in that year when Alan Sokal succeeded in publishing his brilliant pastiche in Social Text. Sokal’s hoax implicitly condemned – and a fair number of further books and articles raged against, often, alas, without Sokal’s ...”

“... If the rights of man are to be upheld in a dark time, we shall require an age of reason,’ wrote Christopher Hitchens last year on the dust jacket of Harvey Kaye’s recent book on Paine.* And as if to reinforce that message, he has now himself published a little book on Paine, a ‘biography’ of Rights of Man ...”

“... of hundreds waged in Britain and the empire with posters, leaflets and films throughout the war. By turns advisory, exhortatory or simply informative they were generally more stoical than bellicose and often humorous. David Welch’s account is based on the Central Office of Information archive in the British Library, with ...”

“... referendum – the Electoral Commission considered ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ too much of a leading question – but he did at least make sure that his side would be fighting for a ‘yes’. The campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland, which won with a thumping ...”

“... Museum’s current exhibition (until 19 February), ‘on the Alphabet of Phonetic Hieroglyphs Used by the Egyptians to Inscribe on their Monuments the Titles, Names and Epithets of Greek and Roman Rulers’.This in itself was not necessarily big news. The Swedish diplomat Johann David Åkerblad had already correctly deduced ...”

“... is what they want to take from you.’ A man explaining that bathing in cold water reduced his age by three years. An animated frog. A group of Mormon mothers performing a synchronised dance routine, then squabbling about their infidelities in a series of reels. Shitposts. Earnest sadposts. Thirst traps. A bulging man who eats raw organ meat and calls himself ...”

“... left the UK to join Isis in 2013. They were killed instantly. If this had been America, it would be just another small strike in a long war against militants who were possibly – but not demonstrably – plotting attacks on the allies’ home soil. But the British are more fastidious, and cautious with their money, and this was the first time that a ...”

“... the most evocative objects in Ocean Liners (at the V&A until 17 June) is a diamond and pearl tiara by Cartier. Not particularly spectacular as Cartier tiaras go, it was once the property of Lady Marguerite Allan, who took it with her when she sailed from New York on 1 May 1915 on board the Lusitania. Six days later, off the Irish coast, a German U-boat ...”

“... in the Home Counties to buy the replica kit. (And so on: that’s a gentle example.) Let it not be said, however, that I’m one of those part-time, long-distance fans who’s never set foot inside Old Trafford. I went in 1977, when I was nine. Bristol City, during their brief spell in the top division, squeezed an away win: it was divine retribution for ...”

“... The first rule when concocting a conspiracy theory is not to make any claims that can be proved not to be true. It won’t do, for example, to assert that John Kennedy was shot by Jackie Kennedy, because it’s clear from the film footage of the assassination that he wasn’t ...”

“... By now everyone must know the deal: if 75 per cent of people who download the monthly installments of Stephen King’s ‘new’ online novel, The Plant, pay for it, he’ll keep on churning it out. Addressing visitors to his website as ‘my friends’, he urges them to ‘Remember: Pay and the story rolls. Steal and the story folds ...”

“... A spouse used to be considered an indispensable asset for a politician; but then not so long ago bank shares looked like a good investment. For the moment the most notorious of the sub-prime other halves remains Richard Timney, husband and parliamentary aide to the home secretary. On the London Review blog last month Jenny Diski wrote that for the MPs involved, the expenses scandal is ‘like being a grown-up caught picking your nose and eating it ...”

“... been adopted. Suddenly we had a ‘constitutional crisis’ provoked, according to the Daily Mail, by ‘egos in ermine who gave two fingers to democracy’. In an allusion to the 1909 People’s Budget crisis, the Tory MP Edward Leigh claimed that ‘not for a hundred years has the House of Lords defied this elected House.’ This claim was trumped ...”

“... Art Gallery works in favour of the current exhibition. Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers, curated by the English photographer Martin Parr, is made up of around 250 works by 23 photographers who came to Britain for long and short periods between the ...”

“... of the year; U is the 21st letter of the alphabet). Brown and his colleagues, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, have submitted a name to the International Astronomical Union, but it will remain secret until it gets the IAU’s stamp of approval. Unofficially, they’re calling it ‘Xena’, after the character played ...”