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There have clearly been times in the past when major climate shifts have happened over short timescales – over just decades – certainly within the span of a human lifetime.

‘Now, gentlemen, this is a delicate business: we must not offend the Company’s officers, and some of them are very touchy – the least sense of ill-feeling would be disastrous. The men must be made to understand that thoroughly: no pride, no distance, no reference to tea-waggons, or how we do things in the Navy. Our one aim must be to keep their gun

I believed the afterlife was, as an atheist might tell a child curious about heaven, the memories of other people. How my mother would have hated that! To cede control to other people’s brains, when her own brain was what she trusted. Still, she loved being thought about.

Churchyards were well-tended, open public spaces, unencumbered at that time by gravestones, and they also lent themselves very well to dancing and were regularly used for this purpose.

we lived about forty miles from London, too many for urban participation, too few for rural self-sufficiency);

It wasn’t just farmers who took grain to the miller: many people preferred to buy grain and have it milled than buy ready-ground flour at market. Grain keeps well, each packet of nutrition individually wrapped in its own bran husk container. Once ground, open flour can begin to deteriorate in a matter of weeks. Grain therefore went to the mill in s

People like pretty things. When you’re pretty, everybody wants to look at you, they want to touch you. I wanted that for myself. Prettiness means value. But some people never experience that personally. I was young once, but I was never pretty. When something isn’t there, inside or out, how are you supposed to seek it out? Pretty faces, gorgeous sk

Taking his father’s body to his friends in S would have been easier by far. They had fallen into Abdel Latif’s trap. As well as their burden his body was now their only means of escape—because it did still stir up some sympathy, sometimes, and it was the only justification they could point to for their being together on the road at such a time.

The basement floors had never been Beanstalk territory, and Levels 1 to 12 comprised a single large garden. Above the garden was the Middle Zone, or Demilitarized Zone, where foreigners were free to enter—commercial facilities such as department stores, malls, and movie theaters all the way up to Level 21. Then, Levels 22 to 25 were dedicated to th