“... books complement one another uncannily, as though the authors, like the two campus novelists in David Lodge’s Small World, had agreed to divide up the world between them. By secret treaty, as it were, O’Keeffe got to do facts, and Edwards opinions. The opinions, it should at once be said, are the fruit of immense dedication. Edwards has written widely ...”

“... most societies throughout history and in all societies some of the time, censorship has been the means by which a ruling group or a visible majority cleanses the channels of communication to ensure that certain conventional practices will go on operating undisturbed. It is not only traditional cultures that see the point of taboos on speech and expressive ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... This​ is a dry and dutiful book which reads like a ghost story. The person being haunted is David Cameron. Theresa May grew up in a Cotswolds village called Church Enstone, where her father was vicar for much of the 1960s. The vicarage is within five miles of what became Cameron’s constituency home when he was MP for Witney and is roughly the same distance from what is now Soho Farmhouse, a members’ club, a little piece of the metropolis that is a haven for the Chipping Norton set ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... has it, was brought to him mid-set). ‘At the peak of its popularity in the 16th century,’ David Berry writes in his history of tennis, ‘Paris alone had 250 courts, including one at the Louvre and another at Versailles, the latter of which was occupied in the revolution of 1789 by the Third Estate as a symbolic protest at the elitist nature of this ...”