“... the fascinating account of the colonisation of Barbados published in 1657 by the English agent Richard Ligon. Many planters remained nervous about bringing religion to their slaves in the 18th century. Even as some argued that Africans were naturally inferior to whites, planters feared they would lose their powers to enslave when their workers became ...”

“... world remained enchanted. Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic is still a delight to read, but the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ has only become harder to sustain in the fifty years since it was published. Indeed, the book did much to define popular religion as a richly diverse scatter of customs and practices, and to explain ...”

“... was likely to spread. But it was too late to draw back easily; and in the end Prokofiev decided to read the situation in a positive light: Shostakovich might be a ‘formalist’, but he, evidently, was not; why else would the Soviets be wooing him? ‘In the months ahead,’ Morrison writes, ‘Prokofiev allowed himself to believe that, with Shostakovich ...”

“... If you only know the Disney film, it comes as a shock to read the original story of Pinocchio and discover that the Talking Cricket is killed by Pinocchio at their very first meeting. This unusual creature, who has lived in Geppetto’s house for a hundred years, offers Pinocchio a ‘great truth’, solemnly advising him that he will never come to any good if he doesn’t find a useful occupation, adding that he pities him for being a puppet ...”

“... to the art critic Bernard Berenson, which have been edited with unobtrusive wit and erudition by Richard Davenport-Hines.* During the Suez crisis of 1956 Trevor-Roper concluded that ‘there is in England, as in other countries, a fascist world: the world of lower-middle-class conservatives who have no intelligence but a deep belief in violence as a sign of ...”

“... semitic peoples’, as Magnes called it, though he too expected large-scale Jewish immigration. Richard Crossman, who was a member of the commission, concluded that Magnes ‘represented nothing real in Palestine’. This was sadly confirmed by Hourani’s saying that a binational state could work only ‘if a certain spirit of co-operation and trust exists ...”

“... running his own defence and who died before judgment was given. Armatta dedicates her book to Sir Richard May, an English circuit judge who presided over the trial until just before the end of the prosecution case in February 2004, and died shortly afterwards. Despite this, most of her critical comments are directed at the judges’ failure to reform matters ...”

“... God created man.’ There are various ways you might read those words even without looking beyond the scriptures. Set them in the context of archaeology and a different reading altogether suggests itself. Primates turn recognisably human when factors beyond the reach of the senses leave traces in their behaviour ...”

“... Rather than plough through the reading list assigned by his professor, he went into the library to read the first book he could find written by an author whose name began with Z – his first recorded flirtation with chance as method. He was given an ‘A’ in his end of year exams anyway, which convinced him there was something wrong with the system, and he ...”

“... briefly, Christendom’s centre of gravity lay not in Rome but in London. As Wolsey’s mentor, Richard Fox, acknowledged, the Universal Treaty of London was ‘the best deed that was ever done for the realm of England’. But early the following year, the Treaty came under threat. In January 1519, one of its key signatories, the Holy Roman Emperor ...”

“... Wyatt Earp.’ And it’s as good as Lord Byron. Take the life of Disraeli, for ‘novelist’ read ‘poet’, and you’ve got an epic about what happened to Byron after he’d recovered from that deadly fever at Missolonghi. Having fought for Greek independence, he falls out of love with the country and returns home to make a career in British ...”

“... Trump, you are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the US Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy … Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed ...”

“... Apollinaire in the seat of honour as the ‘impresario of the avant-garde’. More recently Peter Read has explored in rich and rewarding detail the complex relationship between Apollinaire and Picasso, illustrating the way the ‘creative dialogue’ between them ‘fostered and inspired some of their finest art and poetry’. Apollinaire’s activities took ...”

“... with superlative fullness. Each of Updike’s Rabbit novels concentrated on a single period, and Richard Ford did something similar in the sequence that began with The Sportswriter, meaning that no event need be skipped. Alec, dancing with his ex-wife, may feel that ‘fifteen years are nothing,’ but fifteen years in these pages is long enough to contain a ...”

“... Tower had its 15 minutes of fame in 2013 when a helicopter, on the way to pick up the tycoon Richard Caring, hit it in fog and crashed, killing the pilot and a pedestrian on his way to work. It is a building so ugly and so out of place – so disproportionate, so brutally disrespectful of its environment and context – that you will, if you pass it ...”