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“... There may be some 20th-century art which would help us to understand Reni’s paintings. Richard Spear illustrates and discusses popular devotional aids which derive ultimately from Reni’s example, and it might also be revealing to examine the devices of glamour, star and society photographs. In any case, it is undeniable that Reni’s ...”

“... be writing the history of art? Three recent books bear on these issues. The Seicento specialists Richard Spear and Philip Sohm have put together Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of 17th-Century Italian Painters, which explores what new co-ordinates one current academic strategy has to deliver; while two treatments of Caravaggio, by Andrew ...”

“... the best condition for a revaluation of Domenichino. In any case, it is impossible to study Spear’s superbly illustrated monograph without admiration for Spear’s – and Domenichino’s – consistently judicious discrimination and scholarly dedication to the highest traditional ...”

“... cause and espousing tritheism. As a philosopher, he was most remarkable – as the title of Richard Sorabji’s splendid book indicates – for his rejection of various parts of the dominant Aristotelian view of the physical universe. According to Aristotle, the heavens are made of ‘ether’, a fifth element distinct from the four sublunary stuffs ...”

“... the back or reverse side of time. ‘Tomorrow in the battle think on me’ is plucked from Richard III, and the evocation of Shakespeare (whose lines supply the titles of several of Marías’s books) is not the pretension it may seem. In Spanish, where one can multiply negatives without contradiction, Marías’s long sentences snowball with ...”

“... anti-Semites and Nazis. We see Kiefer’s cot against the wooden background of his studio; a spear and two swords, one blood-stained, the other shattered, are sticking into the floor. There is no triumph or glory here, just a prosaic assemblage of symbols. The memories of the German nation remain divided, uncertain. At the end of the British Museum ...”

“... Walter would have asked about the horses. He would have stepped in as a Timucuan was about to spear a Spanish horse, and said: ‘Excuse me, sir, excuse me, sir, but is this your first experience with this animal?’ The Timucuan would have answered; the mystery would be cleared up. Richter doesn’t ask because Richter is a historian, and his ...”

“... further west, and the Lakota, the classic mounted horsemen of the Great Plains who formed the spear-point of Sioux expansion. The Dakota, in turn, were subdivided into four tribes: the Mdewakanton, Wapekute, Sisseton and Wahpeton. The Lakota were subdivided into seven tribes: the Brulé, Oglala, Blackfoot Sioux, Hunkpapa, Two Kettle, Sans Arc and ...”

“... himself?’ ‘A lot of researchers say that Hitler was obsessed with searching for the Holy Spear … Where had it been before the Nazi Party came to power?’ ‘Did the Third Reich have highly qualified magicians?’ Were they the ones who made ‘the Nazi gold’ vanish? Had they caused the death of Roosevelt by casting a spell on him? There was a ...”

“... What could possibly be down there? Two new fish have risen to this bait. Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht’s Finding an Ending proceeds from their conviction that ‘Wagner’s libretto, ponderous and mannered though it may sometimes seem (and be), is charged with life and significance.’ They therefore propose ‘to probe its philosophical and ...”

“... Harar is a walled city, self-contained. Though you are no longer required to leave your spear at the city gates, you are still very much an outsider here. Only two Europeans have made any impact, in the sense that their names are known and recognised. One is the English explorer Richard Burton, who arrived in 1855 ...”

“... his play The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck (1634). Warbeck was a pretender who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the princes in the Tower murdered by Richard III. The new king, Henry VII, refers to pursuing the pretender in his quest for sanctuary: ‘How closely we have hunted/This cub, since he ...”

“... mythos’. And the composition of Parsifal showed a curious dual development: the motifs of spear and chalice became more explicitly Christian, yet also more entangled with the fabulous symbolic apparatus which is centred on Kundry and dominates Act Two. A Christian account like Beckett’s consequently faces many difficulties. She has too little to say ...”

“... or dismissive, so some venerable commentators – the late Lawrence Gowing, Michael Levey, Richard Wollheim, Marina Warner and, singled out for a special treatment, Charles Hope – are, in this new edition, keenly reprehended. It should be said that Steinberg, a lively and resourceful writer, could not with any justice be charged with irreverence or ...”

“... that loses France and divides England to the triumph of the Tudors, and from the deposition of Richard II to the glories of Henry V. It is there, too, in the assumption that when the actors talk of horses, the spectators do see them printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth. If you have been brought up on a theatre that encompasses Heaven and ...”