“... and things that may not be done by the rule of law may be done by the rule of government.’ It took the rest of the 17th century – a civil war, the king’s execution, the implosion of the republic, the restoration of the monarchy and the parliamentary coup d’état we know as the Glorious Revolution – to establish that government enjoyed no such ...”

“... an English (or even a British) one, and it has become less so with every generation. The essays by John MacKenzie and John Hattendorf in Cannadine’s collection address this subject, although clearly the ‘global’ Nelson could have filled a volume by himself. A substantial percentage of his crews were not from the ...”

“... so sparingly, cherry-picking from already known and accessible texts. But this soon changed. John Burnett used annotated extracts to illustrate various aspects of working-class life in Useful Toil and Destiny Obscure. By 1981, David Vincent had found 142 memoirs spanning the years from 1790 to 1850, and in Bread, Knowledge and Freedom used them to ...”

“... Saussure, who died in 1913 at the age of 55, sowed the seeds of structuralist thought that first took root in linguistics, then effloresced throughout the 20th century in fields as seemingly distinct as literary criticism, architecture, social anthropology and psychoanalysis. Yet, as John Joseph’s biography ...”

“... young Palestinians’ favourite throwing stone: ‘During the first intifada the young ones who took on the Israeli military with chert became known as the “children of the stones”.’ ‘Elterwater, 12 August 1786’ by Francis Towne This chapter shows Macfarlane’s method at its cleanest and most uncluttered; here he does not interrupt himself ...”

“... a ship called the Zembla). McGuire’s opening sentence is an ironic allusion to John’s gospel – ‘Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man’ – but it also recalls the beginning of the novel that The North Water most resembles, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood ...”

“... The mutable nature of our relationship with the past is the underlying theme of Sentimental Murder, John Brewer’s compelling and surprising pursuit, across two and a half centuries, of the events of a single evening in 1779. What happened in Covent Garden on 7 April was simple enough and largely undisputed at the time or later ...”

“... of life on the throne. Grigory Danilovich, the hopelessly mediocre ‘military governor’ who took charge of Nicky’s education when the boy turned ten, is said to have told the tsarevich that he would learn all he needed to know from the ‘mysterious forces’ released by the ‘sacrament of taking the oath on the day of the coronation’. After 12 ...”

“... being negotiated with France, reignited the wrath of the North Briton’s flamboyant co-editor John Wilkes and his backers in the City, prompting the publication of another withering issue, number 45. The new prime minister, George Grenville, and his secretary of state, Lord Halifax, decided it was time to put a stop to this constant assault on government ...”

“... feral figures became our familiar louche aristocrats and sapphic seductresses, most notably in John William Polidori’s The Vampyre (the other story written during that famous summer on Lake Geneva in 1816), Keats’s ‘Lamia’, Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ and Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Groom calls Dracula a ‘brilliant culmination’ and ...”

“... campaign finance and one of his last votes was cast to undermine unions.Justice Brett Kavanaugh took Kennedy’s seat after a particularly acrimonious confirmation session, in which the nominee faced credible allegations of sexual assault. The political centre of the court now shifted from Kennedy to the chief justice, ...”

“... on any film and store it. Storing would then become the main endeavour of a filmmaker.’When John Lennon was killed in 1980, Ono became the guardian of his work and set about retrieving items that had belonged to him. (Gillon Aitken wrote about bidding on behalf of Ono for Lennon’s tie in the LRB of 25 July 1991.) She saw at first-hand the growth of ...”

“... in one of many moments that reveal them as more sympathetic and imaginative than Jim painted them, took him away and sent him to school in France. He came back from Caen for the holidays via Paris, where he stayed with his glamorous Aunt Maud, an artist, and her husband, an art historian. They ‘redeemed Jim’s childhood’, taking him around the ...”

“... tell you how awful it was. This period has now gone down in history as the great renaissance, with John Osborne, the Royal Court, but most of the time, night after night, you would go and see wretched actors, and there would always be something in the play like ‘God, is this never going to end?’ and Gallery Nell would seize her chance. One of the most ...”

“... officers during the war, and now with Tito, to undermine the Bulgarian state. Frank’s reputation took a dive and his name was removed from memorials and museums. Slowly but surely, in the Khrushchev era and then under Brezhnev, the partisans were rehabilitated: there was a proliferation of Fatherland Front memoirs and public monuments. Dorothy accompanied ...”