“... the medieval historian Bruce McFarlane, would be much exercised by the discovery of the body of Richard III, though there would be some mild satisfaction in finding the king exactly where the sources said he was. McFarlane wouldn’t have thought the body particularly informative as compared with the real stuff of history, some of the ex-duke of York’s ...”

“... to new ways of reading literature and to seeing advertising as something that could also be ‘read’. He was one of a large number of men and women who committed themselves to furthering the postwar expansion of secondary schooling and adult education and to the larger ambition of making art and literature part of ordinary life in a more democratic ...”

“... in a history of the Harlem Renaissance, repeating how much she loved the book on the Duchess. I read it all night on the plane back, every now and then bursting out laughing. After sleeping for a few hours I rang my editor. He told me not to be so manic, then said that an extract from the book was appearing in a Sunday newspaper in two days’ time. How can ...”

“... generally referred to as the ‘Baines Note’ and the ‘Remembrances’. The first, compiled by Richard Baines, is exclusively concerned with Marlowe’s atheistic opinions, while the second reports the words of another man, Richard Cholmeley, who is said to have been converted, or ‘persuaded’, to atheism by ...”

“... time. And I still loathe my wicked stepmother. This last is what needs acknowledging, because as I read Mary Whitehouse’s letters, everything about her, except the trim tailoring, reminded me of my wicked stepmother.* There was the same quivering, tight-lipped prissiness, the untroubled moral righteousness, a desire for the respectable and normal so ...”

“... Fintan O’Toole’s publishers announce that Richard Brinsley Sheridan has been generally ill-served by biographers, ‘who rehash the familiar outlines of his story every decade or so without bringing any intelligent new insights to the task’. By contrast, O’Toole has written a ‘gripping, carefully composed exploration of Sheridan’s career ...”

“... people there protested against the loss of the last of its parks. A Blessing in Disguise can be read as a critique of the utopian planners like Le Corbusier or Fritz Schumacher, but it’s hard to extract any consistent argument from its pages, partly because the authors often ramble on, repeat themselves, digress and get stuck on side issues, and partly ...”

“... most extraordinary material presented by Stargardt, explicit sexual memories and fantasies. They read stories and sang songs as a distraction from the horror, tedium and privation of their daily existence. They congratulated themselves on lucky escapes and reported with a variety of feelings, ranging from exultation to regret and occasionally guilt, their ...”

“... extensive list of unpublished documents consulted in German archives and published primary sources read in libraries in Berlin, Cologne, Freiburg and elsewhere. Over the eight years he took to research and write the book, Kurlander hoovered up everything even remotely connected with the topic. His argument unfolds logically and consistently. And there are ...”

“... Return to Camelot is a model of intelligent and responsible popularisation, a constant pleasure to read. But it does not venture beneath the lively surface. No concession to academic solemnity, let alone any faith in the truth-revealing powers of psychohistory, would have been necessary to confront the question that hovers over every page: why this persistent ...”

“... also a bloodless book. There are few quotations, and the biographical sketches Stevenson provides read as if they had been taken from official obituaries. Nevertheless, the way people experienced the war was vitally important. As Hitler lay in his hospital bed, struggling to find an explanation for Germany’s defeat – according to his account in Mein Kampf ...”

“... at variance with any known English usage, one can hazard a guess at the intended meaning: if you read ‘projected’ for ‘pivoted’, ‘exemplars’ for ‘pawns’, ‘rejected’ (or possibly ‘parodied’) for ‘parroted’, ‘influential’ for ‘inferential’, then at least you get sense; one must hope that it is the sense Macleod wanted. Other ...”

“... all of Scholem’s scholarly apparatus, which has the advantage of making his book easier to read, but the disadvantage that we don’t know what the sources are for various elements in the story. In Scholem’s telling, the development of the great messianic movement within the Ottoman Empire took place without any influence from the broader Christian ...”

“... of women weeping as they recover the details of their alien abductions: all they had to do was read them in order to get the anatomy right. We’re talking three fingers here, not six; aliens have no knuckles, no knees and no muscular structure. Their mouths never open. Above all, aliens never ever have sexual organs and a pregnant alien, like the one we ...”

“... The first picture in Richard Avedon’s folio is captioned ‘Alan Silvey, drifter, Route 93, Chloride, Nevada’. Such photographs were taken in the Dustbowl fifty years ago. But this is art, not documentation. We have learned a lot about photography since the Thirties, and now no one believes that truth is simple – ‘all photographs are accurate ...”