blue

Certainly Wiggy and I had been reduced to bit parts. Neither of us had been asked a single question. It was enough that we were there, mute witnesses to Cynthia’s drama. And yet she had accepted our presence as if she had known us for many years. I have observed this phenomenon before: it is a manifestation of overriding self-love. And even so

By the 1980s, Hittitologists and other scholars were seriously suggesting that an older and better-known enemy, namely, the Kashka, who were located to the northeast of the Hittite homelands, had instead been responsible for destroying the city.

the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile, of all expressions the most tyrannous over a susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund of humour – too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable crust, – and a critical judgment which, if

The tablets, inscribed with texts written in ancient Akkadian, came from an archive of royal correspondence and other more mundane records belonging to the kings of Mari, including one named Zimri-Lim who ruled ca. 1750 BC. They record all sorts of information pertinent to the administration of the palace and the organization of his kingdom, as

‘Before you do that, could you sprinkle that stuff in the little ceramic jar into the pot?’ ‘All of it?’ ‘All of it. Scatter it all over, then give the soup a good mix with the ladle. Then whack the heat up. Simmer everything for a bit, crack the egg in, then turn the heat off and pop the lid on right away. Not tightly, though – leave it a little

Settlement names, equally, betray acute sensitivity to both location and facility. They might be described by their relationship with major routeways. Names with the suffix -stræt invariably indicated a settlement on a Roman road, while -peth or -weg applied to those places sited on respectively shorter or longer distance routes; -anstig or

In revenge for Ymir’s death, the crime at the core of the Viking world, the giants’ hatred of the Aesir will extend to the Ragnarök itself when their armies of frost and fire will invade the gods’ home. There have been many attempts to understand what the giants ‘mean’. Unlike the gods, they do not seem to have impinged on the human world of

“Well, then, some typical country entertainment.” Ignatius shut his eyes and snapped his fingers, as though summoning some elusive memory. “Wait. A dim shaded light. The temperature of a furnace. Smell of hot mashed grass and peaches. Dahlias stuck into squares of cardboard. Give it a name.” “You mean a flower-show.” The Rector shook his head. “Too

In Stet Diana Athill describes the literary brainwashing that led men to be taken more seriously: ‘to a large extent I had been shaped by my background to please men … you actually saw yourself as men saw you, so you knew what would happen if you became assertive and behaved in a way which men thought tiresome and ridiculous. Grotesquely, you would