“... clear out of Russia and leave the Russians to fight it out among themselves’. In Britain, David Lloyd George had similar reservations, but his government included a passionate supporter of the intervention, the newly appointed minister of munitions and soon to be secretary of state for war, Winston Churchill.Wilson’s scepticism meant that the ...”

“... of Laing’s theory and his own life’s progress, my reasoning on the basis of what I read may not have been too far off the mark. It may even have been that Ronnie Laing, romancer of madness, suffered from the same problem as me. According to Charles Rycroft, who was his training analyst, he had ‘an extremely ...”

“... This collection of essays is undeniably a book for academic inmates (if the race of lexicographers may be so described), with a content that only occasionally extends a broad appeal to the friendly layman. Its editor, the distinguished Dr Burchfield, describes it as being ‘Mainly concerned with large historical, period, or regional dictionaries, including ...”

“... their belief that their main job is to protect the settlers, not the population under occupation. David Shulman, a distinguished academic, peace activist and a member of Ta’ayush, an organisation of Israeli Palestinians and Jews promoting coexistence, wrote about the hilltop youth in his recent book Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and ...”

“... worked in Bomberg’s shop, replacing another Jewish scholar who had converted to Christianity: ‘May his soul be bound up in a bag full of holes,’ Levita swore. Together, Bomberg and Levita printed an Aramaic-Hebrew dictionary and the Masoret Hamasoret, a compendium of the correct spelling and notation of every word in the Hebrew Bible. Levita also worked ...”

“... expectations. For all that the Labour Party has tried to exploit Remainer discontent with the May government’s push for a clean Brexit, a powerful undertow of Lexiteering persists. The post-2008 crisis of capitalism has delivered a propitious conjuncture: the left’s supplanting of New Labour and its engagement with an electorate that seems willing to ...”

“... argued document asking for the review to be undertaken in the first place. The NCC’s chairman, David Pascall, is a former member of Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Policy Unit. The former head of the Policy Unit, Lord Griffiths, now chairs the School Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC) which will soon be merged with NCC. It just so happens that ...”

“... mortality levels. At some point in their lives Adam Smith, John Miller, William Robertson and David Hume began to question the theology in which they had been reared: Camic is convinced that ‘their revolution was a union of circumstances’ – in other words, that it was their rearing which freed them for it. That Adam Ferguson did less original ...”

“... named for a person whose name we don’t recognise: ‘Bill Lawton’, ‘Ernst Hechinger’, ‘David Janiak’. ‘Bill Lawton’, a secret name uttered by children playing in their rooms, turns out to be Bin Laden translated into Americanese. ‘Ernst Hechinger’ turns out to have been the name Martin went under when he was involved in the German ...”

“... with firm, frontally presented bodies or with devices that enhance its given texture. Thus stone may, in his metaphors, ‘disclose itself’ or ‘grow steadfastly’, emerging into ‘stone-blossom’. The ideal carver merely helps the stone to unfurl. Taken as prompts to interest English readers in distant Italian reliefs, these marine and vegetable ...”

“... unavailability of the personal style, engender the well-nigh universal practice today of what may be called pastiche.’ This thought-provoking assertion captures a truth about the shift from the modern to the postmodern: there is something pastiche-like about a great many contemporary writers, not least those who write in a personal voice which is in ...”

“... 29 May. Everyone I know is obsessed with Roy Keane’s tournament-ending public diatribe against the Ireland manager, Mick McCarthy. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, having meetings about me? You were a crap player, you are a crap manager. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are manager of my country and you’re not even Irish, you English cunt ...”

“... of a citadel. Life-giving fictions have yielded to noxious myths – myths, the book warns, ‘may kill us yet’. The distinction between fiction and myth is discussed by Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending. Roughly speaking, myths are fictions that have forgotten their own fictional status and taken themselves as real. Liberals like Brooks fear ...”

“... love scene? The question remains under-explored, despite Richard Smith’s assertion that David Bowie and Mick Jagger in their gender-ambivalent days ‘caused more than a few confusing erections’. Sadly he doesn’t give sources. There are more unanswered questions. If there is indeed some link between homosexuality and cross-dressing, what is ...”

“... democratic state’, and undertake to serve in the army or a civilian alternative. Its sponsor is David Rotem of Israel Is Our Home, who also happens to be chairman of the Knesset law committee. A declaration of loyalty to the state and its laws is reasonable. But loyalty to the Zionist state? Zionism is an ideology, and in a democratic state the ruling ...”