“... easily triggered and fearful of difficult ideas. This is the thesis popularised by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). Granted, my students are more likely than we were to interpret their stress (rightly or wrongly) as a mental health issue, not just as part of what it is to be a student. (Then ...”

“... English, they rarely contain any comment either describing or situating the sources they cite; as Jonathan Spence once pointed out, not all report or reminiscence of the period in China is necessarily reliable. Chen’s usage has to be taken on trust, which his judgment otherwise earns. The formidable scholarship on which the book is based yields a compelling ...”

“... parents had reservations when the couple got engaged in 1878: he had no notable ancestors, save Jonathan Edwards (who was only a distant relation); his means were modest and there was a family history of mental illness. Mabel, however, found it in herself to overlook all this. Her first requirement in a husband was sympathy to her ambitions. ‘No man can ...”

“... writing to Douglas: ‘My Own Boy, Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music of song than for madness of kisses … I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.’ By March that year, Hyacinthus was making scenes: ‘Dearest of all Boys – Your ...”

“... for any posterity. It is noticeable that the one outstanding exception, the remarkable work of Jonathan Zittell Smith, a brilliant mind by any measure, should avoid so much as a mention of Weber’s name in connection with his subject. In it comparison alters focus, completely. Taking not only an expressly anthropological approach to the study of ...”