“... exposing scratched markings that looked like ears of wheat – symbols of hunger, perhaps, but more likely fletched arrows, reminders of attacks on the Jamestown stockade or a nod to Archer’s name. A micro-CT scan revealed two fragments of a tiny lead flask inside and some bone splinters, which when 3D-printed appeared to be human. The flask was clearly ...”

“... Few places​ celebrated the Restoration in 1660 with more enthusiasm than Sherborne in Dorset. It was late May, and crowds piled into the tight streets of the ancient castle town. Wine flowed and hogsheads of beer and baskets of white bread were put out for the poor. Some five thousand troops gathered, on horse and foot, as Sir John Strangways, a local royalist, proclaimed the end of eleven years of the republic ...”

“... and races were staged with unprecedented intensity in such media ‘events’ as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, and the David Duke campaign. Conspiracy theories detailed the infiltration of American higher education by ‘politically correct’ militants, and lamented the takeover of the art world by feminists, homosexuals and ethnic ...”

“... on the other hand, seems to say: We are alone, you and I. Writing and print are messengers. No more than that. A true text can have many manifestations, do not bother too much about the livery of the messenger. When, now and again, an author does allude to the look of a page (Lewis Carroll’s ‘Mouse’s Tale’, Sterne’s marbled interfoliations) it is ...”

“... was MacNeice’s master, put it all in two lines: Man is in love, and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say? In Yeats’s case there was a lot more to say, but in MacNeice’s not much. Because there was nothing more to say, MacNeice’s poems have an insistently dark side to ...”

“... universe (light, electricity, nervous energy etc), his deductive theory of which never saw print. More usefully, it was also in Egypt that he had the first glimmerings of what would become his philosophie anatomique: a grand scheme to demonstrate the fundamental structural unity of all animals. Initially, the goal was a modest one. Geoffroy attempted to show ...”

“... George IV had ‘never seriously inspired anyone with attachment’. Later observers viewed him no more favourably, Thackeray catching the prevailing flavour in 1855 and fixing it for future generations in his brilliant essay in The Four Georges. The 20th century has seen several biographies of the last of the four, much the best of which is Christopher ...”

“... is that her intellect was formed early in her life, but to establish the point would take a deal more exploration of the discernible intellectual influences than the professor provides. It would take more than exploration to explain the professor’s remark that by 1801 the ‘London smart set had followed the Prince ...”

“... of his own sensibility. Yet what he writes is subtly and comfortingly self-confirmatory, never more so than when the world, the human heart, the music of humanity, the mountains, are speaking to him (‘as if admonished from another world’, ‘To give me human strength by apt admonishment’). The writing of an ‘Ode to Duty’ shows how much the poet ...”

“... British politics before Thatcher (Sweetness and Light?). Many such lost causes pass unlamented – more likely to be powdered into dry-as-dust dissertations than instant coffee-table books. We know too much about them to regard their passing with unequivocal regret. But elsewhere, the plague of nostalgia rages with ferocious and seemingly incurable vigour, as ...”

“... is paid in a festschrift, is his predecessor in the same chair, while Lord Dacre of Glanton, more commonly known as Professor Trevor-Roper, is the recently retired Regius Professor at Oxford. From this conjunction, a classical or prophetic scholar would no doubt bring forth a portent: if the conjunction of three kings signified so much, what might the ...”

“... Gay liberation, FitzGerald observes, was part of the Civil Rights struggle, but it was much more than that. Now that the feminist movement had passed its radical phase, gay activists saw themselves as the avant-garde of the sexual revolution and the revolutionary change in sex and gender roles. Specifically, their goal was to overturn one of the oldest ...”

“... doesn’t matter. It makes no difference.’ Many of the stories, however, are much more subtle, like the best parables, leaving the reader to ponder their significance. Of course, we should have reservations about the use of anecdote as a basis for public policy. Richard Posner once remarked that the United States is a nation of ...”

“... on Presidential Debates, can claim particular authority. (‘President John F. Kennedy told me more than once’ is the book’s opening phrase.) His and LaMay’s study is overwhelmingly concerned with the complex and often tortured history of the debates as an institution. There is some information – but not a lot – about the intricate negotiations ...”

“... Debs. There were two Socialist members of Congress, dozens of Socialist state legislators, and more than a hundred Socialist mayors. The leading Socialist newspaper, the Appeal to Reason, had more than 500,000 subscribers. And this was only a portion of a much broader swathe of the electorate who considered themselves ...”