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“... it. According to Cocconi and Morrison’s calculation, the frequency of the 21-centimetre line lay in a sweet spot of the electromagnetic spectrum, away from naturally occurring sources of background noise. Given this universal property, aliens might reasonably expect any civilisation to design sensitive receivers tuned to the frequency early in their ...”

“... line, every form, every colour has arisen from a deep necessity.’ This was the principle that lay behind her own commitment to geometrical abstraction across all her work in design, from cross-stitch compositions, each an easel-sized ‘tapestry’, to domestic interiors; from pieces of furniture to the décor of the Aubette in Strasbourg. The works at ...”

“... and splendid in their variety. Stretches of track, curved and straight, 00 gauge and N gauge, lay stacked and abandoned. A cardboard box marked ‘Mixed Deciduous’ held tiny trees, waiting for a modeller to plant them on his little hillsides, where their straight trunks and neat crowns would add a Swiss orderliness to a pretend English landscape. The ...”

“... centuries it became widespread. Ancient Sanskrit texts discuss the rates lenders could charge and lay down rules about the pledging of oneself or one’s sons as security. In China, there is clear documentation of interest, at high rates, from at least the fourth century BCE. The first mention in Greece is from the fifth century; thereafter, Greek ...”

“... Neo-Impressionists aren’t obvious angels of chaos, yet Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac and Maximilien Luce all advocated anarchist positions, including ‘the propaganda of the deed’, aka bomb-throwing. This is one of the riddles of modernist art, and at its centre is the sphinx Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), great champion of Seurat ...”

“... individual critics have rarely resisted the temptation to mock his identity-pangs. Paul Johnson wrote of him recently in the Sunday Times as ‘a fashionable figure’ with ‘modish problems of identity ... It is not clear to me,’ Johnson continued, ‘who, or what, the real Edward Said is.’ The implication is that ‘identity’ in the ...”

“... has wider implications: conformity signifies health, deviance sickness; to diagnose madness is to lay down the law, while to attempt to treat it is to reaffirm the unequivocally rational nature of the social order. If traditional histories of psychiatry are Whiggish, anti-psychiatry histories (particularly that of Michel Foucault) are often relentlessly ...”

“... attack. He was 44. His body was taken to a cheap mortuary on West Washington Boulevard. ‘There lay American genius [and] not a soul was in the room,’ the journalist Frank Scully wrote in his book Rogues’ Gallery: Profiles of My Eminent Contemporaries. ‘Except for one bouquet of flowers and a few empty chairs, there was nothing to keep him company ...”

“... appears to be suggesting that you might – just – be able to struggle against patriarchy and lay down your arms before your father at the same time. Of the elaborate armoury of anecdote and counter-myth which Angier brings to the battlefield, the most powerful story is that of Jane Carden. Carden suffers from AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), which ...”

“... But the real point of principle here is that we agreed that it should be for Parliament to lay down what offences should be held to be sufficiently serious to go before a jury. Over 90 per cent of criminal cases are tried by magistrates and will presumably continue to be so. Somebody has to draw the line. But why should the defendant be the person to ...”

“... and Lane Fox aptly reminds us of the incident in the Acts of the Apostles when Barnabas and Paul are mistaken for Zeus and Hermes. Often seeing and hearing were combined in the oracular centres where consultation of the god, most frequently Apollo, might be preceded by incubation and fasting and lamp-lit ceremonies. The gods were consulted on a great ...”

“... groove with an immeasurable distance between them, but on parallel lines.’ A similar impulse lay behind the rise of the religious movement known as ‘Ethiopianism’. The term was first used formally by a South African ex-Wesleyan minister called Mangena Mokone, who founded his Ethiopian Church in 1892. To African Christians throughout sub-Saharan ...”

“... she asserts, both sexes worked in embroidery workshops. These centres produced goods for rich lay people and elaborate vestments for the Church. The organisation of such businesses seems to have been mostly in male hands, but there is evidence of one female entrepreneur, Mabel of Bury St Edmunds, who worked on orders from Henry III. There is also evidence ...”

“... forces, his family’s ardent and historically-conditioned desire for a cultural investment, Jean-Paul is remorselessly channelled towards words and writerdom. It is as sustained a demonstration, pursued with unflagging rigour, of a writer being ‘made’ as Conrad’s is of a writer making himself; and the contrast of the one’s savage repudiating irony ...”

“... petitioning for access to the Oval Office to a man who himself had no access.’ The difficulty lay in part in Haig’s temperament. Because he had built his reputation in staff jobs it was assumed that he would make a good team player. But he was not a comfortable person to be with. According to one writer, he brought a ‘ferocious intensity’ to each ...”