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“... his justly-renowned History and Social Influence of the Potato. Smaller-scale and little-known by comparison, but in its unambitious way hardly less fascinating, is N.W. Simmonds’s monograph on bananas, with its thought-provoking insights into early human migrations derived from the study of present-day distributions of the banana’s varieties, each of ...”

“... Great art collections formed by individuals are generally highly specialised – French Impressionist paintings, English sporting pictures, early Chinese bronzes – or somewhat specialised – Classical antiquities, Old Master drawings, Islamic art. What is special about George Ortiz’s collection of antiquities and ethnographic art, part of which is currently on show at the Royal Academy, is its combination of quality and breadth ...”

“... themselves, but a quirk of scheduling: ‘the Salon no longer exists; in a few days it will be replaced by an exhibition of automobiles which will stand there, long and dumb, each one with its own idée fixe of velocity.’ The public wanted its preconceptions back in a hurry. Kipling should have been there. He was ...”

“... Lentricchia has written a lengthy chapter on each member of his quartet. Yet Eliot is represented by ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and The Waste Land only, Stevens primarily by ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘The World as Meditation’, Frost by a handful of short poems; while the ...”

“... The resemblance is established in Shadow Sites I (2010), which reinscribes by means of its own kind of graphic manoeuvre an already existing inscription. A shadow site is a built structure invisible at ground level, but thrown into dramatic relief when viewed from above by the slant of the sun’s ...”

“... the stakes have never been higher. The occasion was the Future of Britain conference, organised by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and presided over by the man himself. Its theme was that British politics is failing to meet the challenges or seize the opportunities of the 21st century. There were sessions on ...”

“... applying ‘lessons’ from the imperial past, that just as the Afghans have always thwarted would-be conquerors, they will go on doing so. But they haven’t stopped to consider why the British thought it worthwhile to become involved in Afghanistan in the first place, or what they hoped to achieve. These questions are important. Unless they can ...”

“... about the early life of the NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick, begins by comparing American football to slavery. We are shown a group of Black football players having their bodies prodded and measured by white coaches, as they decide who fits the bill and who gets tossed on the scrapheap. Two ...”

“... What can be done with a people that produces 246 different cheeses? General De Gaulle’s remark may be apocryphal – France has far more than 246 cheeses – but it captures a central dilemma in French history. How could such a diverse collection of peoples be forged into a single nation? The question remains pertinent ...”

“... in which the championship was a two-horse race – and a very close race, so that there may never be a consensus lasting more than fifty years as to which of them was the winner. Nevertheless, there is a clear distinction in their greatness, one relating purely to its nature, not its degree. It’s that Matisse did not possess or need to possess genius. The ...”

“... above the tree-line, they split into two groups, so that if one was snowed under, the other would be able to attempt a rescue. Snow thundered down and the youngest member, Anatoli Povykalo, just 18, was overwhelmed. The others dug him out, unharmed. They spent the night in the forest, where hundreds of trees had been snapped off a few metres above the ...”

“... have been allowed to join the Union. I didn’t mind the question, though. Mormons may no longer be subject to extermination in Missouri (that legislation was rescinded in 1976), but the eleven million Latter-Day Saints – a little under half live in the US – are generally thought to be peculiar, when they are thought ...”

“... to Kingsley Amis on 21 November 1985. He was too ill to hold the pen himself and dictated it to be typed and signed by his secretary at the Brynmor Jones Library in Hull. He told Amis he was going into hospital that day for more tests – ‘only tests, but of course they are looking for something, and I bloody well hope ...”

“... night had 18.7 million viewers; in 1998, the Titanic year, it was 57 million. This is getting to be like the last stages in musical chairs. Folklore says the Academy hires good-looking suits and gowns to fill the theatre seats when stars and quasars retreat to the bar or take meetings. Why can’t we have pretty virtuals to take our places in the living ...”

“... circuits came along. Called transistors, they transfer the resistance necessary for the current to be regulated from one end of the device to the other.’ And so on.In some ways this is charming – he has the touching enthusiasm of the recent convert, in contrast to the ‘been there, done that’ flavour of much of the rest of his advice. But it’s also ...”