Margaret Leigh

The faces were pale, true, but—Henry noted with a sinking heart—quite aggressively merry and free from any sign of stress: the voices were unnaturally loud and friendly. The whole dingy place had the air of a monstrous end-of-term party.

the economist Milton Friedman once wrote: ‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible

In 1987, Mario Liverani, of the University of Rome, laid the blame for the Collapse upon the concentration of power and control in the palaces, so that when they collapsed, the extent of the disaster was magnified. As he wrote, “the particular concentration in the Palace of all the elements of organization, transformation, exchange, etc.—a

‘Graham Greene,’ he said. ‘He wrote a superb 1943 novel that I think of often. Have you read it? The Ministry of Fear.’

with very kind brown eyes – kind, but not foolish; and when he came back to the table, carrying a pot of coffee, they were hard and piercing.

A limit of three nights for a host receiving a guest is actually specified in the law codes of two seventh-century Kentish kings. ... During the twelfth century (in the Middle English period) a similar rule appears in the law code attributed to Edward the Confessor but with more detail: a guest is only a guest for the first three days; after that,

From around 4000 BC, thousands of small communities slowly evolved towards the strong tribal kingdoms that were eventually to confront the invading Roman army.

You explained about the ‘psychological autopsy’ you wanted to conduct on Kim Jin-su, but I still couldn’t understand it. You wanted to record my testimony – what for? Would that bring Jin-su back to life? Our experiences might have been similar, but they were far from identical. What good could an autopsy possibly do? How could we ever hope to

“Lose yourself in books, in art, in the haze of new horizons. Lose yourself in curiosity, in knowledge, in passion. Lose yourself in feeling it all; lose yourself in the world, in the stories and the lessons it has to teach you, but never lose yourself in love; never lose yourself in another person. You are your own home—please don’t ever forget