“... 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 ...”

“... grouped and weakly gridded, an increase in incomes for some, far from exciting envy and emulation, may for a time give rise to peaceful anticipation of delights to come. In segmented societies, on the other hand, societies of somewhat stronger gridding and grouping, societies divided by lines of faith or race or entrenched status, an increase in incomes for ...”

“... random changes to outweigh natural selection. The example is also interesting in showing how we may be misled if we study the fossil record only in one place. Suppose that, when the water table rose again, the new form had replaced the original one in the rest of the rift valley, instead of the other way round. Then, if we had examined the fossil record ...”

“... part of his private experience when he was not writing poetry. If music is combined with words it may be possible to venture on an exegesis not totally fatuous, but even here Bach is ready to transfer a setting of one text to something quite different: there are some remarkable instances in the four Short Masses about which Professor Mellers maintains a ...”

“... boys, so many girls, at deliberately decided intervals. Even the disposing of infants, therefore, may not have been incompatible with maternal or parental affection, any more than inflicting punishment or hardship was. It all depends, as it always must, on the culture, the attitude, the situation at the time: on the family concerned, on the personality of ...”