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“... of an intellectually adventurous life begins with an immensely normal, typically English, middle-class family and an ordinary public school education: no disturbing precocity as a schoolboy, no outward brilliance marking him out, as Russell and F.P. Ramsey were marked out in their earlier years. Mr Hodges includes photographs of seaside family ...”

“... for Gosford Park, minus Altman’s cinematic originality but retaining Maggie Smith as stock upper-class matriarch, found its proper level when Fellowes, understanding what it really was, both stretched and slackened it into a TV soap opera with frocks and pinnies. Although of course the pre and post-Great War setting ...”

“... Eighty years​ have gone by. But there’s still no agreement on how the Spanish Civil War should be remembered. Nor should there be. The real tribute to the force of that human firestorm is the contest of judgments and feelings which still smoulders and still causes pain. Where should the focus be? For many, simply on the stories: the recounting of sacrificial courage and suffering ...”

“... an important, and entirely valid, role in the teaching of American history. Since the Second World War the history of the United States has established itself as a reputable and increasingly popular subject in British colleges and universities, and in the last few years this interest has filtered down to the schools. Those undergraduates and sixth-formers ...”

“... volumes. Where did the money come from? Shanghai International is one of China’s ‘Double First Class’ universities, intended to become world-class by 2050. But in the meantime there are 36 Class A and six Class B universities that outrank the ...”

“... efforts of revisionist academics to exorcise it. His preoccupations were those of his time and class and gender, but their effects linger, and shape popular understandings of the past. National development. The dominant theme of the received orthodoxy is the coming into being of a mature and autonomous nation. Open almost any of the narrative accounts ...”

“... Philip Roth, then spending a lot of time in London, called it ‘the best English novel since the war’. Not being such a fan of A Perfect Spy, I’ve occasionally wondered what Roth’s generous blurb says about the postwar English novel. As a le Carré bore, however, I’ve also wondered how Roth managed to overlook Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), the ...”

“... Before my appointment to a visiting scholarship at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was confirmed I had to submit a synopsis of my proposed research. At that time my working title was ‘Physical Appearance and Life Chances in Modern Society’. Already before my departure in late October I had changed the latter phrase to ‘Life Experiences’, having worked out that while the good-looking arouse different responses from those encountered by the less well-favoured and thus have different opportunities and experiences, one cannot say that they are inevitably more successful ...”

“... increase in human misery? Yes. An increase that will be seen as unacceptable? Not necessarily. The class, race and nationality which have produced some of the greatest racing drivers, from Juan Fangio on, and remarkably daring pilots during their first-ever modern war, are not simply going to accept defeat in one ...”

“... engine: the Rolls-Royce Merlin, famous for having powered most Spitfires during the Second World War. I don’t know what every part does, but there is pleasure in trying to parse a sentence in a foreign language. The Merlin is now downstairs, labelled as ‘the engine which saved Britain’, close by Miss England, a contender for the water speed record, in ...”

“... Three decades ago​ , with the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the South American dictatorships, many hoped that the much talked about ‘peace dividend’ promised by Bush senior and Thatcher would actually materialise. No such luck. Instead, we have experienced continuous wars, upheavals, intolerance and fundamentalisms of every sort – religious, ethnic and imperial ...”

“... for ‘individual freedom’. Observers outside Tennessee may find it incongruous to identify a war fought to preserve slavery with the ideal of freedom, but Jefferson Cowie, who teaches history at Vanderbilt University, in the heart of the state, wouldn’t be surprised. His new book seeks to explain why so many Americans, especially but not exclusively in ...”

“... was itself an imitation of European models and was in turn imitated – especially after the Civil War, when its remodelled big dome emerged as a symbol of the Union – by more than a few state capitols from California to Wisconsin, Utah to Mississippi. The very name ‘Capitol’, together with the Capitol Hill on which the building stands is an invocation ...”

“... during the 1850s as an open adversary of Southern ‘Slave Power’ and the advent of the Civil War in 1861 shattered this second party system, and ushered in the seemingly familiar conflict of Democrats and Republicans. In the 1890s, tensions between agrarian and industrial interests enshrined a new set of meanings in these two broad political ...”