“... Divorce Act in 1857. At a deeper level however, and characteristically, Stone’s purpose was far more ambitious. Ever since his huge, combative and in every sense seminal volume, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1977), Stone has been scornful of those historians of the family who put their trust primarily in demography. This is partly for ...”

“... Historians of Ireland seem more compelled than those of any other country to move beyond their immediate research interests to offer general appraisals as a means of explaining the present condition of their country. Some do this through the medium of radio or television, others offer contributions to one of the several multi-volume paperback histories of Ireland, while most cherish the ambition to advance their opinions in a single-volume history tracing developments in Ireland from some crucial date in the past to the recent present ...”

“... to them, though I suspect that his choice of words is inspired by other contemporary writers more often than is commonly acknowledged. (Should we not, for example, read the opening of Murphy – ‘The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new’ – as a sardonic riposte to Auden’s cheerful sonnet inviting the heavenly body to ‘look ...”

“... with Mazzinian nationalism. I came away from the conference pleased that my remarks were received more with respect than with rancour. Yet shortly afterwards, taking part in a conference on the Sixties, held in Philadelphia, I made the same reply in response to a similar question about the failure of the New Left. This time my remarks about patriotism were ...”

“... as revelatory of the conditions and dilemmas of making art in his time as the careers of his more progressive contemporaries. Gotlieb’s case is often ingenious and engrossing, illuminating some dark corners of 19th-century visual culture. Still, readers may end up feeling less than fully persuaded, and doubtful in particular whether Gotlieb’s ...”

“... are, but that in philosophy the distinction between academic discussion and personal attack is more subtle: it is harder in philosophy to tell when the attack is on a writer’s motives rather than his work. Michael Dummett, in these two books on Frege (and there is more to come), evaluates the views of a fair number of ...”

“... Ackerley’s My Father and Myself, this is a biography-cum-autobiography in which the father is more reprehensible by conventional standards – and in the eyes of the law as well – than mere monsters like old Gosse or Butler/Pontifex. Wolff père was a professional conman, if ‘professional’ is the right word. In some ways it isn’t, because his ...”

“... careers. The typical politician, for instance, begins near the bottom before moving to a peak, or more usually a series of mountains or molehills, before going into decline. William Pitt the Younger is the great exception. Because of his parentage and abnormal abilities he began at the top. Entering the House of Commons at the age of 21, which was by law the ...”

“... for itself. In their own day, Gaston’s book and Edward’s version of it had considerably more impact than did Charny’s Book of Chivalry. Only two manuscripts of that work survive, against 19 known manuscripts of The Master of Game and 46 of the Livre de chasse. For a modern reader, however, Charny is likely to have greater interest. The hunting ...”

“... research position and the flashy job title of ‘philosopher and mathematician’. To his more paranoid or prescient contemporaries, the transfer looked like slow suicide, and those of his Venetian friends who were still talking to him after his shabby horse-trading begged him to return to the Serenissima’s haven of intellectual freedom, where ...”

“... provincial capital: by the mid-1880s, a decade after Unification, its population had risen to more than 1.3 million and it was the focus of a newly powerful state. The way of life to which Fontane’s generation had become accustomed was disappearing, and the future was auspicious but uncertain. Fontane was always ambivalent about Berlin. He complained ...”

“... might better be left unexamined. Over large portions, this book is about nothing – or, nothing more than the weekly phut-phut of the English literary establishment. It is a book in which the reader learns how to endure, if never quite outwit, a dark regime of sentences such as ‘One feature for which the Lit Supp has always been famous is its cantankerous ...”

“... very original to say so. The discourse of stereotyping has long been exhausted. Nothing is now more predictable in cultural theory than an aversion to the predictable. It would make for a bolder, more innovative study than this one to put in a good word for stereotypes, even though academics at certain American ...”

“... Castle was transferred to the National Trust in 1951 in lieu of death duties and now receives more than a hundred thousand visitors a year. In 2011 the North Wales Jamaica Society was established to trace links such as these, to establish shared histories and offer modest material redress in the hope of repairing some of the harm done.Colonial Countryside ...”

“... again until the arrival of the Lionesses a hundred years later. The ban lasted until 1971 and more or less extinguished women’s football in Britain for generations, while in Sweden, Germany and the US the women’s game continued to flourish.In other sports, women sneaked through, or under, the sex barrier. In tennis, for example, the first ...”