“... gospel of the abbé Barruel and Joseph de Maistre, to which reactionary Catholics and many others held fast throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries. For two hundred years, these popular images of the Enlightenment have retained considerable force. Textbooks (including Colin Jones’s superb new one) have repeated them to new generations of ...”

“... Had they been fellows, Crusoe could have set himself productively to work, and at the same time held communion with their original owner, by placing them on his feet. But since they do not match, the shoes can only be regarded as detritus. Dispersal has cut them off not only from the past, but from the future. They may have some way to go, as detritus, but ...”

“... up with the space of drifting. The chair in the attic is up to no good. Then you took me and held me like I was a child or a prize. For a moment there I thought I knew you, but you backed away, wiping your specs, ‘Oh, excuse ...’ It’s okay, will come another time when stupendous seabirds are carilloning out over the Atlantic, when the charging fire ...”

“... When Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food appeared in 1950, many of the ingredients it called for were unobtainable. But even after meat came off the ration, few people can have had much practical need for a traditional Turkish recipe for stuffing a whole sheep. That was not the point. Saturated with description, of figs and aubergines, of fishing boats at anchor in Marseille and paella pans left out to dry in Spanish courtyards, Mediterranean Food brought a beakerful of the warm South to chilly, postwar England ...”

“... found out my mother was going to marry my father, she asked my mother to reconsider. ‘What about David?’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to marry David instead?’ David is my father’s brother. He still lives alone in the council house my grandmother died in. He used to hear ...”

“... doubts about the German national character, which became the subject of a notorious seminar she held at Chequers with a group of historians to discuss what German reunification might mean for the rest of Europe. A note of the occasion made by Powell, which was subsequently leaked, listed some of the attributes that were considered: ‘Their insensitivity to ...”

“... psalms in more flamboyant terms: How loudly I cried out to you, my God, as I read the psalms of David, songs full of faith, outbursts of devotion with no room in them for the breath of pride! … How loudly I began to cry out to you in those psalms, how I was inflamed by them with love for you and fired to recite them to the whole world, were I able, as a ...”

“... banned groups advocating for an Islamic caliphate in the country.In his new book, Revolusi, David Van Reybrouck puts the creation of the republic at the centre of the story. Indonesia was the first country to declare independence in the wake of the Second World War, shortly after the surrender of Japan, which had occupied what was then known as the ...”

“... facts presented in his account, and in those of pioneering media critics such as Liz Curtis and David Miller, suggest that a more critical verdict would not be out of place.* The early years of broadcasting in Northern Ireland had been safe and somnolent, as Savage describes. After BBC Northern Ireland was established between the wars, its directors quickly ...”

“... undressed and hung his clothes askew on the silent butler. When he took off his underpants, he held them in his hands a moment, expecting his wife to look towards him naked. She didn’t. About to throw his underpants on the floor, where his socks were, he noted, on the inside of the crotch, a yellow stain. He thought: Oh, Christ. He reached down for his ...”

“... Ican list​ a hundred things David Foster Wallace should have written before he wrote a book about tax accountants. One, and the most obvious, is a novel about Irish dancers on tour with a Michael Flatley figure whose influence grows more sinister over time. Pounds of verbal oil will be poured into his perm; his bulge will almost rupture his trousers ...”

“... of his 30th birthday, he was elevated to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge – once held by the equally precocious Isaac Newton. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Schrödinger, and remains one of the youngest recipients. Though he was by no means finished as a physicist by this point – he continued to produce ...”

“... and the threat of violence, by the total uncertainty and instability of day to day life. ‘People held their lives to be of no value,’ one Chinese writer said. ‘They knew none of the joys of being alive.’ As Parker points out, rates of suicide, abortion, infanticide and abandonment soared, as did the incidence of ‘melancholia’, many cases of which ...”

“... with the robust octogenarian, or nonagenarian, who attributes his longevity to a course of living held up as an example to all. Early rising, daily walks, simple diet, abstention from alcohol and tobacco, and a list of virtues are paraded for our inspiration, however contradictory and inconsistent they may be.’ His life, he was well aware, was likely to be ...”

“... a left-wing victory was necessary for Spain’s democratic health. But now the Socialists have held too much power for too long. The PSOE has become too much part of the state, its members are in too many public positions, its control of many things – most glaringly of television – is too strong and too obvious. Spain has become too felipista just as ...”