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“... of when he was born or how he came to power, nor do we have dates for many of his conquests. Matt Waters devotes much of his new biography to sorting through such problems. The outline at least is clear. Sometime in the eighth century bce, Cyrus’ ancestors migrated from Central Asia to the Zagros mountains in what is now Iran, east of the Fertile ...”

“... it. He claimed the otherwise obscure Achaemenes as an ancestor, and went out of his way, as Matt Waters points out, to insist that Cyrus, too, had been an Achaemenid, though Cyrus himself had never said anything of that sort. Darius became an even more dominant Great King and so, despite the possibly mythical status of Achaemenes, the rulers of the ...”

“... who could be called ‘very competent’ is small, but the former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger is one of them. At private school and university in Massachusetts he learned to speak excellent Mandarin, and in the early 2000s worked as the Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in China (where he was once punched in the face in a café by ...”

“... yellowhammers and partridges, voles and mice, to the kestrels, sparrowhawks and owls. Now all is matt yellow or matt green from edge to edge of each huge field. The downs and meadows are falling silent. The rivers are losing their clarity and their fish as nitrate residues leach into the watercourses. It has happened ...”

“... efficiency. This is the way to read Kurlansky’s book: as a diving board into deeper, stranger waters. But the history of paper, despite Kurlansky’s subtitle, is not the same as the history of writing. Paper has been used to make many things – Kurlansky briefly mentions hats, kites, lanterns, fans, money, umbrellas – and for much of its history, as ...”

“... from abroad, for example, found less genetic influence on racial difference. These are turbulent waters, but Ridley wades in boldly, determined to demonstrate the hegemony of the genes. He begins on the right note by observing that ‘intelligence’ is a slippery notion that can be defined and measured in many ways. He immediately bypasses this ...”

“... works in ‘Homer’s Phobia’, from Season Eight of The Simpsons, first broadcast in 1997. John Waters provides the voice of a dealer in ‘collectibles’ who admires the family’s style, assuming it’s knowingly camp. Even Homer’s record collection – The New Christy Minstrels, Ballads of the Green Berets – presses every button on the jukebox of ...”

“... bought out a local cocoa manufacturer and the product became popular with the tourists taking the waters at Bath. A century later, the Frys were owners of the largest chocolate factory in the world. In 1847, they started making the country’s first chocolate bar, Chocolat Délicieux à Manger. Like Joseph Fry, John Cadbury had gone from selling cups of ...”

“... the lines:Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.Hurley’s cumbersome cinematograph didn’t last long, so there is only still photography to record his time on Elephant Island. He kept the film as best he could, but even with modern ...”

“... Control saying, “I’ve just opened my door and there is thick black smoke outside,”’ said Matt Wrack, head of the Fire Brigades Union, when I asked him about it. ‘Telling them to evacuate is sending them to their deaths. So you’re in a flat where you can breathe, you go out of the flat you can’t breathe: there’s only one thing you can tell ...”