“... their surroundings, and tried to come to terms with modernity? ‘This is a political history,’ David Vital’s first sentence states baldly. What interests him most is the legal relationship between Jews and the states they lived in, their evolving civic status, the nature and growth of hostility to them (though not its causes), and the emergence of ...”

“... The title of David Abulafia’s magisterial book comes, as he reminds us, from a Hebrew blessing, to be recited when setting eyes on the Mediterranean: ‘Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the Universe, who made the Great Sea.’ His book is a two-fold history: first of the trade and the traders who discovered the sea, created its ports and never ceased thereafter to animate it in pursuit of commerce ...”

“... cultures – because it both ‘assimilates and homogenises’. Two foreign observers of Italy, David Lane, the Economist correspondent in Rome, and Paul Ginsborg, who teaches at Florence University, are now also arguing that fascism has returned to the country. Lane begins his book on the beaches of Lazio in January/February 1944: ‘That winter was among ...”

“... separate out the thread from the ball – rather than gather it up as Theseus had done. In David Copperfield, Mr Wickfield tells David he will ‘unravel’ a clue. In Great Expectations, Dickens refers to a napkin being wielded like a ‘magic clew’, leading ‘the way upstairs’. In The Moonstone, Gabriel ...”

“... Land became, within two years of settlement, a hospitable refuge.’ The seasoned and sensible David Collins, once the right-hand man of Arthur Phillip, the governor of New South Wales, in Port Jackson, now lieutenant governor of the Van Diemonian settlements, responded to diminishing supplies by ordering the purchase of kangaroo meat ‘at 6d per pound ...”

“... Constable grew increasingly preoccupied with printmaking and collaborated with the young engraver David Lucas to translate his oil sketches and paintings into 22 mezzotints, part of what would become known as English Landscape Scenery. Proofs survive, and are covered with the handwritten revisions and instructions with which Constable besieged Lucas: ‘two ...”

“... In Island of Shame (2009), a history of the military bases on Diego Garcia, the anthropologist David Vine reports that in 1960 a Pentagon policy paper advancing dominion was titled ‘South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Monroe Doctrine and Force’. From guano to copra to guns. Britain’s former colonies in Asia were none too happy as news about these ...”

“... genius and renown, the British and American mass audience was thrilling to the reborn version of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. The movie, which is the closest investigation most English people have made of their country’s long, intense, misunderstood encounter with Islam, is actually rather touching in its attempt to ‘understand’ the other by ...”

“... parakeets, which are spreading rapidly in London (a large colony at Sunbury apparently) and may one day oust the pigeons. Yorkshire, 29 March. The conductor on the GNER train to Leeds is now styled Customer Operations Leader and announces himself as such, though (and it’s to his credit) he stumbles several times when he has to broadcast this ...”

“... So on what do the claims made for Poussin’s mind ultimately rest? To answer this question it may be worth considering the subject of the painting that inspired Bernini’s remark. Its pendant, the Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion, depicts two slaves bearing the shrouded corpse of the Athenian general away from the city that had sentenced him to ...”

“... with his rival from the radio, Chester Wilmot, Moorehead was an Australian by birth – and he may well have owed some of his success (not least with his employer, Lord Beaverbrook of the Daily Express) to a certain air of breezy informality. But there was also more than a touch of the grand seigneur about him – reflected in his automatic assumption ...”

“... pieces of legislation, such as the Berne Convention, do not even venture to define what ‘work’ may be. ‘Literary work’ in copyright law is thus a semantic convenience of the same order as ‘John Doe’: what it is all depends. The legal fiction that the literary work has an abstract, single existence which accompanies but mysteriously transcends any ...”

“... situation, and the need to insist on the absurdity of the absurd. Horror and meaninglessness may be frequent, even banal, but we are lost if we treat them as normal, as all there is: if we abandon our anger at the affront they offer to reason. If our normality helps us to struggle, our rage may help us to survive. But ...”

“... Andy Seaman​ felt out of place when, on 26 May 2022, he walked into the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. Andy has little connection to Ireland; he’s from East London and his family’s roots are in Dominica. But earlier that day he had heard on the radio that the centre was hosting an event run by the organisation Troubles, Tragedy and Trauma ...”

“... involvement in Britain’s 5G network, and the bombardiers of Brexit – Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Liam Fox et al – are furious too. The industry points out that Huawei kit has already been installed in dozens of cities across the UK and to a more sophisticated standard than the US can currently provide. Ripping it all out would cost billions ...”