“... Courtney; a prolific writer, she also produced a six-volume dictionary of female biography, and may have been the author of an Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women. Understandably, the compilers of the DNB in its early years had a particular predilection for biographers, but they did not read the signs of the times so well as to believe ...”

“... the editors of the three slim volumes that make up the collected Letters frankly tell us. Editors may be happy to leave it at that, but unfamilial biographers are less inclined to do so. Speculation is made to fill the blanks which Hallam Tennyson has created for posterity. Typically, the speculation shadows the spirit of the age. In 1904, influenced by Max ...”

“... in this world the virtuous are punished for every sin they commit, so that in the next they may have uninhibited bliss; but the wicked receive any reward which they deserve in this world, so that they may suffer fully for ever. The social inversion may be appealing to the ...”

“... talked what he called the ‘true Ciceronian’ (i.e. always ending every period with a verb), may have been the death of Bach and certainly did nothing for Handel. Still, he clearly removed a lot of cataracts; he had a steady hand and a sharp knife; there is something horrid in his own account of how he cured a noble lady of a drooping eyelid, she calling ...”

“... as a continuing challenge. To be sure, those who dreamed of creating a genuine liberal democracy may have failed to achieve their immediate goals, but they issued a powerful invitation to establish the sovereignty of the people. This dynamic concept, Morgan writes, ‘has continually challenged the governing few to reform the facts of political and social ...”

“... get the fraudulent a long way, as is proved by true stories of con men and their patter; and that may be one reason why novels of expertise, where subject-matter determines genres, are suspect. Even so, some of the best things in the books noticed here are built within, and could not easily have been written outside, the conventions of ‘lower’ genres. The ...”

“... For those of us who never quite mastered the old physics, the idea of tackling a new version may not be terribly tempting. But Ed Fredkin, the controversial scientist whose brain-child it is, insists that digital physics is simpler than the ordinary kind. In fact, its simplicity, its elegance is one of the main reasons why Fredkin believes in it. And ...”

“... and explication. Much in its development, self-rebuke, heuristic methodology and findings may never be altogether cleared up. And in so far as it is a critique of all metaphysical pretentions, and a series of exercises which the reader is meant to reject after having striven with the utmost honesty to repeat them, it is by no means evident that such ...”

“... another kind of politics was required. Gramsci called this the ‘war of position’, and it may be best summarised as a struggle to change the cultural basis of politics, to challenge the hegemony of the ruling class and substitute for it the hegemony, or, in Gramsci’s terms, the ‘common sense’, of the masses. This distinction between ...”

“... granted even by those who regret that he is so tolerant of them as works of art. ‘Theatrical’ may suggest condescending praise but Rosenblum takes Lady Jane Grey very seriously. This will shock some people, but they will be relieved that Rosenblum does not recommend that we like everything. He shakes no established reputation – a pity to my mind since ...”

“... expect memes to ‘evolve’ phenotypic effects favourable to their own replication. However, it may make a crucial difference, as Dawkins acknowledges, that memes can replicate only by generating a phenotypic representation of themselves, whereas genes replicate by a direct template process. Dawkins’s meme concept has been criticised on the grounds that ...”

“... in the 19th century. If this was whig history it affected tories in quite the same way. The layman may well wonder why work should still be done on the history of Parliament, that olive whose oil has surely long since been pressed from its desiccated flesh. There have in fact been three distinguishable phases in modern historians’ treatment of the ...”

“... he deplores her treatment of her husband and her son, but only so that we – he, primarily – may the more underline her monstrous behaviour to him, Joe. ‘Horrible, horrible woman. Poisonous. Corroded with jealousy and envy.’ The misogyny is unremitting; beside it, the misanthropy is light relief. Francis King’s introduction finds convenient a turn ...”

“... a goal but a method.’ ‘Chirac is a De Gaulle with no 18th of June, but available for a 13th of May.’ ‘Proliferation wrecks deterrence ... Indifference rules the world.’ ‘How many journalists,’ Mitterrand wonders, ‘have been killed in their first day on the battlefield of literature?’ Himself, he looks like a survivor: he could certainly earn ...”

“... buttressed by an instinctive reaction against whatever line the current American Administration may take, that popular national movements towards democratic freedom in Eastern Europe are enemies of world peace. The corollary is that Solidarity is (was?) a particularly dangerous nuisance. ‘The good news is the crackdown in Poland,’ Ian Davidson wrote in ...”