“... patient’s state of mind played a significant part in many illnesses, and in any cure. His own powers of suggestion seem to have been formidable, though he knew hypnotism could work only within limits. ‘All talk about an unwilling and unaware person being hypnotised at a distance is sheer nonsense,’ he says, before adding, as a magnificently imperious ...”

“... in world politics. Its fate was barely discussed at the wartime conferences of the Allied powers. Against considerable odds, and with little outside help, the partisans and communists led by Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu forced the German army from their country in 1944, and afterwards held off a series of US and British operations to subvert the new ...”

“... the last Tudor monarch from assassination and protected the English state from invasion by foreign powers, and denigrated as a Machiavellian politician who masterminded a campaign of intimidation against Catholic missionary priests and engineered the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots by methods of the most dubious morality. Building on the classic image of ...”

“... from a speech by Pericles in an English translation of The History of the Peloponnesian War that Thomas Hobbes published in 1629. The sentiment expressed is one that haunted him throughout his intellectual endeavours. Hobbes regarded himself as one of the first philosophers to engage in genuine political science, by which he meant not only the analysis and ...”

“... Henry’s reign, surfacing for example in the warning from the mayor of London, the redoubtable Thomas fitzThomas, at St Paul’s in 1265: ‘As long as you wish to be a good king and lord to us, we will be faithful and devoted to you.’After this unpromising start – a civil war in which the barons only narrowly opted in the end for the child Henry ...”

“... green contact lenses, painfully painted on. Sole survivor of Atlantis, he used his special powers, notably the ability to survive high atmospheric pressure, to foil the evil plans of an evil-looking villain with an evil-looking beard and an evil-sounding German name: Schubert. Even my enormous teenage appetite for the fantastical and men in swimming ...”

“... from which Ricks takes the title of his volume. Johnson speaks of ‘that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter’. The essay on Gower starts by propounding one of those popular critical problems which have little bearing on the ordinary reader’s enjoyment of literature: are an author’s effects ‘the ...”

“... remain) or St James blackballer could wish: D.H. Lawrence (seven vols), Virginia Woolf (six vols), Thomas Hardy (seven vols) and Katherine Mansfield (four vols). The Conrad project, begun in 1983, is moving to its close with this, the sixth instalment of what will be an eight-volume set. These compilations are among the most expensive and least remunerative ...”

“... run over by Stephenson’s Rocket at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830. Thomas Love Peacock, who found a pleasant berth at the India Board after writing Nightmare Abbey, began to investigate the possibilities of navigating the Euphrates from the Gulf to northern Syria – the India mail already went that way, but by land. James ...”

“... on the British public was remarkable. There were those who wondered at Geller’s supernatural powers, and those again who merely wondered about them. John Taylor, professor of mathematics at London University, did both by turns. Taylor is an empiricist. Not for him the argument from good form or the lack of it, but rather the argument from galvanometers ...”

“... for missionary activity, which greatly intensified in the 17th century. Pioneers such as the Dutch Thomas Erpenius and Jacob Golius – with the help of native speakers, usually Arab-speaking Christians from North Africa – learned Arabic and produced the first usable grammars and dictionaries. In the generation that followed, an enormous amount of work was ...”

“... industrial communities even strengthened the language for a time. As the Welsh economist Brinley Thomas put it, ‘the unrighteous Mammon, in opening up the coalfields at such a pace, unwittingly gave the Welsh language a new lease of life, and Welsh Nonconformity a glorious high noon.’ There are still large numbers of Welsh-speakers in the ...”

“... seven countries including Britain and Argentina have claims). The American and Soviet super-powers are parties to both arrangements. Among the many morals to be learned from the events of 1982 is the need for member-states of the United Nations to reinforce the Charter’s absolute prohibition on the use of force, as an instrument of change; as for the ...”

“... attempt to restore peace and stability by introducing regular conferences at which the victorious powers – Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia – could tackle problems as they arose. Castlereagh was cautiously magnanimous in victory: ‘It is not our business to collect trophies, but to try … [to] bring back the world to peaceful habits.’ French ...”

“... passengers, who included the American tycoon Alfred Vanderbilt and the Welsh mining magnate D.A. Thomas. The German submarine U-20 had already torpedoed three British cargo vessels off the Irish coast. At lunchtime on 7 May its captain, Walther Schwieger, sighted a four-stack passenger liner, clearly British, and dived to intercept her. He fired a single ...”