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“... under ‘Religion’. As misrepresentations go, it’s not bad: a deity created in our own image. Jonathan Glover’s book is not exclusively about the Holocaust, but unlike many other atrocities chronicled in this lengthy codex it bags a section to itself, and the culminating one: the Final Solution as grand finale. The book’s subtitle is ‘a moral ...”

“... When the hero of Jonathan Raban’s new novel is scolded for living in a world of his ‘own construction’, the implied rebuke falls flat: this, for Raban, is the whole point of America. Raban’s travel books present America as a ‘glittering fiction’, a country shaped by the ardent imaginings of its immigrant millions and by the universal reach of its popular fables – ‘the mythology of the western and the romance of the frontier ...”

“... certainly follow this pattern. Adam Gray was a sergeant in the tank regiment in which his friend Jonathan Millantz was a combat medic. There is strong evidence that both committed suicide, although their deaths were ruled accidental by the military. Both talked about their experiences, Adam to his mother (whose memories constitute most of the account of his ...”

“... Barry Webb has assembled shows Blunden going out to bat with Rupert Hart-Davis, in a match between Jonathan Cape and the Alden Press. That was in 1938. Blunden looks miniature, a frail determined Don Quixote with eagle nose and jaw, who had persuaded the burly Yorkshireman as they set out for the crease together not to wear batting gloves, which were ...”

“... like Coe caricaturing aspects of himself. Both characters draw attention to the gap between the power the political novelist believes himself to possess and his work’s real influence. PC Pilbeam’s nickname at work is ‘Nate of the Station’, and the novel switches between being a State of the Nation novel and a Nate of the Station novel – a work of ...”

“... a dream – in a state of suspended curiosity, thinking about forms of language which have the power, or are intended to have the power, to bend the world to one’s will. When Farage travelled to Bulgaria earlier this year with Jonathan Rugman for a Channel 4 News special report, what ...”

“... the strange career and ultimate oblivion of this indigenous philosophy of the self-taught that Jonathan Rée’s Proletarian Philosophers is concerned. To understand who Craik was, it is necessary to go back to 1909, the year of a celebrated strike at Ruskin College, Oxford. The students of the newly-founded college – mainly miners and railwaymen, Craik ...”

“... by his new minister’s skill and dependability and Bismarck soon dominated the antechamber of power. He would remain at the summit of German politics until he was forced into retirement 28 years and two kings later. It was an extraordinary career by any measure. In 1864, after only two years in office, Bismarck led Prussia into a war with Denmark over the ...”

“... Side of Everything; Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions; Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking; The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations; Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us; Nudge: Improving Decisions about ...”

“... country could be one of the causes of social malaise because of its aggression towards those in power in civil society.’ Many of Lloyd’s criticisms of the BBC are hard to disagree with – a wearisome focus on personality and celebrity, a deficit of serious current affairs and arts programming – but the pressures of competing with commercial TV for ...”

“... Ibrahim Qashoush, ‘Get out, Bashar!’What is striking in these exuberant demonstrations is the power they produce. They serve not only as an outlet, a collective release for accumulated tension; they also give energy back to the participants, fill them with a little more vigour to endure. The group generates energy and then each individual reabsorbs ...”

“... mythos was explicitly deflationary. Starlin was more into wish-fulfilment fantasies of cosmic power, but he was droll and readable, and the scrupulous way he drew his psychedelia was actually (I see now, paging through the stuff) indebted to Steve Ditko’s early version of Doctor Strange. Enough. The point is, Gerber and Starlin were the two creators ...”

“... One​ of Jonathan Swift’s first published poems was a piece of 18 lines called ‘A Description of the Morning’. It was printed anonymously in an April 1709 edition of the Tatler, which in its original incarnation took an interest in literary criticism, history and philosophy as well as society gossip. Richard Steele, the magazine’s editor and a friend of Swift’s, puffed the poet and his work in an introduction ...”

“... on bringing people along with you. And people are not levers you can pull. If anything, the power of the British executive to get its way in the teeth of opposition has been seriously diminished in recent years. The most effective weapon has been removed. Prime ministers used to have direct access to the off-switch. If all else failed, they could ...”

“... urban governments with high property-tax rates and progressive environmental policies wield great power (some say tyranny) over their rural hinterlands, delivering ukases about land use and conservation: brush-cutting is to be limited to 40 per cent of the property; ‘setbacks’ of 100 feet are required from streams and wetlands; new churches are denied ...”