“... in any case Calvin never wanted for it. Alastair Duke on the Netherlands, Henry Cohn on Germany, Robert Evans on Eastern Europe, Patrick Collinson on England are all as alive to the limits as to the extent of Calvin’s influence on churches which drew eclectically from a range of Protestant and Humanist thought both native and foreign, and which were more ...”

“... a cogent statement of empiricism would be like in any language other than English. This last claim may at first sight seem absurd to anyone who has read the sometimes witty and always rigorous exposition of logical positivist doctrine that appeared in Erkenntnis in its great days. And it is of course true that in the Thirties in Oxford the young A.J. Ayer was ...”

“... who had written them, and that he had no sense of self-criticism, ever. Hardy’s turn to verse may be the most interesting event in his life during these years, but it is not a major subject in his letters. Here neither literature nor life concerns him much: his principal subjects are business and health. It is interesting, for a little while, to see what ...”

“... retained the mind-set of the inter-war years and saw no need for radical change. And what, it may be asked, was wrong with that? These people (few of whom in fact had ‘upper class’ backgrounds) were impregnated with the kind of social conscience that had become commonplace among the professional classes since the days of ‘New Liberals’ like ...”

“... the Fifties, quotes Eden as writing just before he resigned the premiership in January 1957: ‘It may be than the United States’s attitude to us in the Middle East dates from our refusal to give up Buraimi.’ And Burrows asks: ‘Can it really have been that important?’ It was. Strictly speaking, Buraimi was one desert village in the middle of ...”

“... attempt to resurrect the school spirit on the battlefield has a foretaste of doom about it. Tears may after all be in order, tears hardly knowing what they mean, though one knows only too well what they meant for Wilfred Owen in the Somme trenches 24 years later. After that war Newbolt was soon forgotten – in spite of a hugely successful tour of ...”

“... fears of nuclear war, there is barely a mention of the influence that US domestic politics may have had on the course of events. Theodore Voorhees’s study is different. He highlights the all-important fact that in October 1962 John F. Kennedy was about to face congressional midterm elections. The results would determine the fate of his presidency, as ...”

“... kneecapped and executed those they suspected of being informers for the British state. Captain Robert Nairac, a member of the army’s undercover 14 Intelligence Company, apparently frustrated with the lack of information he was getting from the RUC, decided to go to a pub in South Armagh one Saturday night in 1977, a pistol hidden in his clothes, in an ...”

“... doing.’ He told journalists that at least some of the deaths of incarcerated people this year may have been due to ‘pre-existing conditions’. During his election campaign Adams promised to close Rikers, but his commitment appears to be wavering. The city budget for the coming year provides funding for an additional 578 corrections officers. Jarrod ...”

“... But protest is not the same as a whole-hearted endorsement of far-right positions. Meloni may have warned France and Germany that ‘the party is over,’ but the Fratelli are condemned to continue the ‘reforms’ started by Draghi: if Italy doesn’t meet 55 ‘milestones’ by December, Brussels won’t release the billions the country desperately ...”

“... It offered the vacant throne to William and Mary. What if James returned? Isaac Newton consulted Robert Sawyer, the distinguished lawyer who, with him, represented Cambridge University in the Convention, and received the reassuring advice that to oppose a de facto king, even if on behalf of a lawful king, was treason. But James’s attempt to regain his ...”

“... have no idea what it contains. In the 17th century, it was in the possession of the antiquarian Robert Cotton (who kept it in a bookshelf topped with a bust of the Emperor Nero – hence the shelf mark). Cotton owned a lot of manuscripts which announce their value the moment you open them. The Lindisfarne Gospels – Cotton MS Nero D iv – is unashamedly ...”

“... reasoned hypothesis) as one component of ‘adequate historical explanation’. Its propositions may not be susceptible of proof; but if we talked only about what we could prove, our commentaries on the past, and on the present, would be too jejune to retain attention. Williamson distances himself from the problem by collapsing the distinction between the ...”

“... for example, he claimed that ‘Eberhart ... is a prolific writer, so the metaphysical pieces may merely be poetic callisthenics to keep him fit until his next burst of creative energy.’ Of Hugh MacDiarmid in 1962: ‘He has managed a curious creative amalgam of old and new, uniting great feeling for his country, its traditions and language, with the ...”

“... make any sense. It’s the poverty of the possible in such cases that makes us think the job may be impossible, and of course with poetry the difficulties escalate drastically, since now we have rhythm and tonality and undercurrents and much else to deal with. Paterson says his (excellent) versions of a selection of Antonio Machado’s poems are ...”