“... Rainbow, Salisbury Cathedral’ from ‘Various Subjects of Landscape’ after John Constable by David Lucas (1837) The uses of adversity are sweet as well as bitter, as the old Duke in Shakespeare almost said, and what is best about Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape is probably as much a result of hard times as what is not so ...”

“... World War Amery could imagine a self-sufficient Empire immune from the troubles of Europe. In May 1915 he wrote to Milner: ‘All this harping on Prussian militarism as something that must be rooted out, as itself criminal and opposed to the interests of an imaginary virtuous and pacific entity called Europe, in which we are included, is wholly ...”

“... to deal with miscarriages of justice. It noted the criticism of the Home Office made by Sir John May, who led an inquiry into the cases of the Guildford Four and also the Maguire Seven, whose convictions were quashed in June 1991. May wrote that the Home Office’s ‘approach … was throughout reactive, it was never ...”

“... were opposed to the war. Little did Mosley know how justified his case was. For instance, on 28 May 1940 the War Cabinet discussed the question whether the British should appeal to Mussolini as an intermediary with Hitler. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, was keen on this or as keen as he could be on anything. Neville Chamberlain, until recently Prime ...”

“... or summer or winter. It knows nothing but two seasons: Dust, and Mud. Now, at this moment, in May, we seem to be getting towards the end of Mud. Mud settled in more than six months ago, and has shown no sign of taking its leave just yet. The streets have settled into their pristine ooze, and if there be any bedrock beneath the vast sucking mass which ...”

“... and not simply about members of religious orders: Benedictines do not seem to suffer from it. David Knowles wrote a history of the monks and friars in medieval England that was instantly recognised as a masterpiece, but I can’t quite see a Jesuit pulling off something similar – though on a smaller scale John O’Malley’s The First Jesuits ...”

“... at Maastricht are absurdly restrictive and could not survive a severe recession, which there may soon well be, without inflicting unacceptable damage on many European economies. But, characteristically, the Conservative Europhobes do not make that case; they merely bleat in Mercian style about national sovereignty and national independence, talking what ...”

“... would be anti-Conservative committee-rooms, as happened in the Vale of Glamorgan by-election in May; that Arthur Scargill would be seeking to become a fully-owned subsidiary of Ron Todd? Yet all this has come to pass, and so has industrial action by academics. That is, for me, the saddest development of all. Fashions ...”

“... Pope, who was soon venting his pique against ‘piddling Tibbald’ in The Dunciad, published in May 1728, and elsewhere. In this context of rivalry, the appearance of Double Falsehood seemed suspiciously convenient. What better way for Theobald to demonstrate his editorial expertise than to produce out of his hat a supposed lost play by the master? And ...”

“... character sings in The Threepenny Opera. His hypocrisy is unmistakable, but the ironic implication may also be right. We don’t all want to be human, even if it’s possible. We have other ambitions. Still, the relevant characters in the singer’s world and in ours are human in the standard, technical sense, even if some are fictional. What happens when ...”

“... It grows up to six centimetres long, has a brown or white shell and a speckled body that may range in colour from grey to orange. In sheltered bays, these molluscs settle into fine, soft mud or muddy sand, where they mate in undulant chains, half a dozen at once. When disturbed from their orgies, the snails swim away using two broad fins or ...”

“... after a visit to the Exposition Universelle, he expressed enthusiasm for British painting – for David Wilkie, Charles Robert Leslie and Francis Grant – and noted that the archaisms of the Pre-Raphaelites (the ‘école sèche’) had not inhibited their response to life and sentiment: he cited the Order of Release by Millais as something beyond the ...”

“... The mall is divided into two distinct levels, a result of the building’s complicated history. It may look like a single symmetrical mass of brick, but it’s really two buildings, one from the 1920s and the other from the 1950s, concrete-framed and clad. For the first time, members of the public can now see inside, and the difference between the two ...”

“... of the early 1920s. Price levels in January 1946 were more than five trillion times those of May 1941. The exchange rate for the gold sovereign in the autumn of 1944, shortly after the liberation, stood at 170 trillion drachmas. By that time, Davis’s pile of notes would scarcely have been enough to buy a loaf of bread. Commentators on the current ...”

“... was. Lots of things are different here, I’ve learned since I arrived from New York last May. You don’t tip as much, and I often bump my head getting on the tube. In London, I’m told, fact-checking’s not much done: the facts are the burden of the reporter. But at the LRB we do check facts, which are for the most part conveniently located in the ...”