“... those who support Save Britain’s Heritage know only too well. We live in a retrospective age and David Lowenthal’s discursive study is a product of it. One of the attractions of this book is that it enables the Melton Constables of the world to be seen in the context of the future as well as the past. David Lowenthal is ...”

“... distrust between the two governments. Diplomacy was now conducted not only between states but by means of innumerable conferences in Europe’s resorts and spas – ‘casino politics’, as Raymond Poincaré disparagingly called them – as well as the League of Nations. Finally, there was a larger cast of actors. During the 1920s new states in Eastern ...”

“... to control angry crowds . But appearances were more than a matter of policing. They were a means of marking, symbolically, the shift from the old to the new, but were also assumed to have transformative value. To some extent they still do: a uniform marks someone’s official function (soldier, policeman, doorman), but also encourages the modes of ...”

“... Grégoire considered them morally and physically degenerate and propounded their emancipation as a means of eradicating Judaism, especially through intermarriage with Christians. The abolition of slavery resulted from the insurrection of slaves themselves in Saint-Domingue rather than French revolutionary generosity. Grégoire welcomed emancipation but hoped ...”

“... a key part of the story. The exclusion of Josef Albers shows bias. The exclusion of Mark di Suvero means the omission of the one artist (David Smith is something else) who has created a sculptural equivalent of Abstract Expressionism, the movement which forms the nucleus of the exhibition. The exclusion of Chuck ...”

“... by an off-screen sigh. It is also generally agreed that debates are not won but lost, which means that they have become essentially a defensive activity, like World Cup football. The candidates’ preparation for them – a considerable art in itself, almost entirely ignored by Minow and LaMay – largely concerns avoiding past mistakes and current ...”

“... if rightly understood would naturally be forgiven. This was the alibi endorsed in January 2010 by David Margolis, the Justice Department official who reviewed the recommended censure of the ‘torture memos’ by the lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee and upgraded the evaluation of their actions from ‘professional misconduct’ to ‘poor judgment’. Like the ...”

“... So he took the project underground and executed it in secret. Cheney issued the orders, his lawyer David Addington drew up the rationale, and Hayden at NSA made the practical arrangements. Eventually Cheney would appoint Hayden director of the CIA. Americans caught our first glimpse of the possible scope of NSA operations in December 2005 when the New York ...”

“... about a cyber Pearl Harbor, as techno-Orientalist. Techno-Orientalism is a term invented by David Morley and Kevin Robins to describe the ‘Japan panic’ of the late 1980s. By that time, the Japanese economy, driven by non-stop technological innovation, had become the second largest in the world after the United States. Japan was the leading creditor ...”

“... priest of The Tinker’s Wedding). In practical terms, the miracle removes the couple’s main means of employment, but more important, vision destroys their illusions about themselves and each other. Believing his wife to be beautiful, the newly sighted Martin walks straight past her to the luscious young Molly (to receive a rude ...”

“... David Gower was this year’s most popular victim, the English underdog, the handsome knight sacrificed by knaves. But good news is at hand: the hero has announced a brilliant season full of runs. In the tradition of General MacArthur, David Gower has announced his return. I hope he succeeds ...”

“... problem with replacing mixed farming with intensive monocultures is that it relies on artificial means. James Rebanks writes in English Pastoral: the farms with thousands of animals had more muck than their land could possibly accommodate, while the crop farms now had no animals, and thus no muck to fertilise plants, so were entirely reliant on ...”

“... on 15 occasions. Even on fairly modest assumptions about the length of election campaigns, that means that more than a year of his life must have been spent electioneering. He was elected to Parliament at 27, and sat in the House of Commons for more than twenty-eight years, before becoming President of the European Commission. He returned there only a year ...”

“... but the will that puts us in direct contact with reality. This mysterious thesis probably means that we understand the world through the force that drives it because it is the same as the force that drives us. O’Shaughnessy too claims a special position for the will, but his point is a different one. It is that we know a priori (in advance) that ...”

“... might sound like, because the technology wasn’t available. Dewey was born in 1859, which means the first election of his lifetime was one of the most consequential in American history, the 1860 contest that brought Abraham Lincoln to the White House. It wasn’t much of a conversation though, more an exercise in mutual incomprehension and ...”