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“... is in the nature of Macbeth to be swift and utterly single-minded,’ the critic Michael Long writes. As though there must be no time for hesitation or revision or doubt. As though there is a danger that momentum might be lost. A change of heart – or even the possibility of giving up on the usurpation of Duncan – must not, cannot, be ...”

“... has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents. That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of ...”

“... food if we drop tariffs on agricultural imports from Africa, Australasia and the Americas, as Michael Gove wants to do, and it gets even better. Just not for farmers. The spectre haunting the British farmyard is that the EU debate will turn public attention to what’s happening down on the farm, whatever the referendum result. There is, after ...”

“... whom are basically human (hobbits, dwarfs, the men of Gondor and Rohan), some superhuman in both powers and goodness (elves, wizards, men of royal blood), some superhuman but evil (ringwraiths), some subhuman but sturdy with it (orcs, trolls). There are no monks or monasteries; in fact there is no religious activity on Middle Earth at all.The story begins in ...”

“... the employees of the vast ‘realism v. anti-realism’ industry founded by his Oxford colleague Michael Dummett) when, following Locke, he insists that physical science is less bound up with human interests and needs than are, say, chess, novel-writing or the munitions industry. The question of whether any area of human culture could be less bound up with ...”

“... some of the medical history that was being published in the Eighties, particularly by Roy Porter. Michael Neve and Jonathan Miller separately suggested that the madness of George III would make a play, and Neve lent me The Royal Malady by Charles Chenevix Trench, which is still the best account of the King’s illness and the so-called Regency Crisis. I also ...”

“... their eyes back on the pre-reform era, saw little reason to dispute its unsavoury reputation. Even Michael MacDonald, whose splen did Mystical Bedlam used the casebooks of the astrological physician and divine Richard Napier to illuminate the mental world of the 17th century, and to suggest that mental alienation and distress might then have been dealt with in ...”

“... the public eye, although she saw the necessity of it.’ The two women went to the same school, St Michael’s Grammar, and they knew each other’s families from way back. Lurgan is the sort of place where everyone can seem to know everyone else. Dara finished a PhD in politics a few years ago at Queen’s University in Belfast – on community groups – and ...”

“... George Craig, the translator, to the limit, and which in both languages challenges the reader’s powers of comprehension. Duthuit had asked Beckett to write something to promote the artist Bram van Velde, whose abstract paintings Beckett greatly admired. A debate ensues as to what van Velde’s qualities are. The premise for both men is what Beckett calls ...”

“... that Kelley was disabled in some way (and disability is traditionally associated with the psychic powers he claimed). There is a reference, during one of the séances, to his difficulty in kneeling. And then there is the question of his ears, or lack of them. This is sometimes said to be a late tradition, dating from the 18th century. It is not. It first ...”

“... both NIEO idealism and corruption. In 1974, the Venezuelan Congress extended ‘special powers’ to President Pérez, giving him complete discretion to legislate and spend. He nationalised industries, limited foreign influence in banking and commerce, and launched a massive programme of state-controlled industrialisation. Money flowed lavishly and ...”

“... Richardson had insisted they were innocent and had been framed by the police. I recalled that Sir Michael Havers, who led for the Crown in the 1975 trial, had reasoned to the jury that if the Four were innocent, a huge conspiracy to pervert the course of justice must have taken place. Where did this leave Havers’s conspiracy? Had the Court of Appeal ...”

“... Tikvah, who introduced me to a chain-smoking, grey-haired man whom everyone addressed as Mikado. Michael Warchavski runs the AIC and is married to Lea Tsemel, whom I have known for a decade as an indefatigable Israeli lawyer stubbornly defending Palestinians in Israeli courts. Reminding me that Israel is an intensely legalistic country and that the only ...”

“... of prisons. The second secretary of state had privatised the probation service. The third, Michael Gove, had decided to sell off the London prisons, which stood on prime city-centre real estate. Liz Truss, the fourth, had rented out floors in our office building, got rid of more managers and promised to reduce costs across prisons and courts with new ...”

“... power? Runciman is not alone in thinking they can. The same assumption can be found in the work of Michael Mann, of which Runciman has been a severe critic, but whose scale and focus invite comparison. The common source of this bias is Weber – the dominant influence on this cohort of British sociologists. Fixation with power has, of course, gone much further ...”