Proxies​ stand in for something or someone else: a press secretary stands in for a politician; the number of citations a scientific paper gets stands in for its significance; the rise or fall of Gross Domestic Product stands in for the overall health of the economy.

Harvey C. Mans​field, a professor of government at Harvard from 1962 until his retirement from teaching in 2023 at the age of 91, has never shirked any opportunity to burnish his reputation as a conservative ogre. His interventions in the campus culture wars have been plentiful, memorable and clumsy.

A decision by NHS England to withdraw open-source code created with UK taxpayer funds because of the risk posed by computer-hacking AI models is attracting growing backlash.

At the centre of Henry Snow’s book stands Jeremy Bentham’s proposed prison-rotunda, the Panopticon.
Snow reminds us that the idea of a building designed round a central inspection tower “was a workplace before it was a prison”, the brainchild of the philosopher’s mechanically minded younger brother, Samuel.

As Wordsworth found in Paris after 1789, revolutions are deeply enthralling. There is nothing so bold, so self-sacrificing, so brave, so cruel as a revolutionary crowd. What’s more, revolutions have shaped the modern world.

If you thought merchandise inspired by Frida Kahlo had reached its peak in 2018 with a controversial “Frida” Barbie doll, complete with floral headpiece and braided hair, think again.

Pic­ture the scene – you’re cross-coun­try ski­ing across an icy snowscape: just you, the frozen sea and a ‘group of tobog­gan­ing Ade­lie pen­guins’. As you pass, they waddle over, curi­ous to see what you are doing. Decid­ing that you’re prob­ably all right, they con­tinue tobog­gan­ing on their bel­lies along­side you as you ski back to your camp.

During the occult revival of the nineteenth century, hundreds of palm-readers promised thousands of clients insights into their personalities and futures.

Nick Lloyd, who runs tours on the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) in Barcelona, confesses that new volumes on the war are ubiquitous, and that it features in the Spanish press every day. Writing a genuinely engrossing book on the subject, as he has, is therefore no mean feat.

On the morning of October 30, 1961, scientists at Kew Observatory in southwest London detected an unusual air pressure wave. Its spokesman told The Times that it was “the largest such recording I have ever known”.