“... for a scholar who can pursue so many intellectual interests so constructively. A second reaction may be to be somewhat suspicious of an intellectual agriculture which is extensive rather than intensive. Le Goff arrives, clears the field, crops it and then moves on to the next frontier. Slash-and-burn, rather than the prolonged cultivation of an intellectual ...”

“... and engaged in a very active public life – if his ambition to ‘ruin the great work of Time’ may be thought to qualify for that description. Cromwell’s progression from private to public could be used to illustrate a point Spacks borrows from Habermas (‘individual self-contemplation prepared the way for the assumption of power’), though in the 17th ...”

“... and law. Ziolkowski’s grand comparative idea involves lots of details with which readers may disagree, and many questions remain unanswered. One central issue that deserves more discussion is whether the title is an oxymoron. Can heroes hesitate and still be heroic? Is there any justification for thinking of heroism and hesitation as ...”

“... essay (excluding the appendices, which take up more than a hundred additional pages), but readers may nevertheless conclude that biography too is ‘different and diminished’ in our less than heroic age. Knight treats Nelson’s professional life in a scholarly and thorough fashion, but there is little exalting of anyone. We learn, for example, of the role ...”

“... weren’t always bright enough to think very much at all, and Bessy’s flaw in Arabella’s eyes may be that she thinks too much. The pages Arabella has devoted to her are devastating. For all her efforts to leave her past behind her, it seems Arabella knows exactly who she is. The Bessy section is headed: ‘The Most Particular Case of a Low ...”

“... be the first to welcome the new leader. But then Damascus is presently under such pressure that it may be a waste of time trying to assess how genuine this response is, or whether it was born of a real understanding of the Israeli political scene. It does, however, indicate what hopes attach to his election. Soon similarly positive noises were heard from other ...”

“... 6.9 per cent of income, 9-10 per cent below what used to be normal. Whatever this private deficit may portend for the future, it is certainly entirely different from anything that has ever happened before – at least in the US. The general view seems to be that private expenditure has risen because capital gains are being spent; so everything should be all ...”

“... individual effort required to produce it. If Winchester has his way, Smith’s portrait may yet appear on the £10 note, and the ‘father of English geology’ nudge Darwin off it. Smith was fortunate to have first studied the strata around Bath, where the rock succession provided a ready key to his understanding. He was also blessed with unusual ...”

“... performing their parts; but the possessed priests were genuinely beside themselves. Dog’s Dick may have started as a joke, but by the time he inhabited Father Tranquille he was as authentic as a demon can be. This is the story of Loudun. We already know it, for Aldous Huxley, writing against the background of McCarthyism, told it in The Devils of Loudun ...”

“... they have the power to sink Third World economies. Half-understood, seemingly arbitrary actions may cause untold human suffering. She has no illusions about changing the system – she isn’t in any position to do so – but she disapproves of bankers on principle, just as her bosses disapprove of the literary flourishes she injects into the speeches she ...”

“... innocuous (like the model’s fingers in the old man’s chest hair); the bull and the woman he may be abducting are both tied up, not very convincingly, with strings of flowers; a curtain comes down on the performance as a gentle shower of rain. The model still has on her Bacchic garland, and the sculptor is dreaming of his days as a wild thing. (Picasso ...”

“... to have a distinctive number of Neanderthal genes. Stringer bravely suggests who the Denisovans may have been and how the Melanesians came to have such a mixed genetic heritage. But the reality is that these are unsolved mysteries. Here is another one: how can ‘modern behaviour’, as represented by innovative stone tools and symbolic artefacts, appear in ...”

“... to stand for the same things they stand for. Their humiliation by their coalition partners on 5 May has given them reason to change tack: the mutiny of some Lib Dems in the House of Lords has led to the defeat of the police chief proposals (whipped by Clegg through the Commons) and opposition to much of the NHS legislation is now officially sanctioned by ...”

“... the session were that girlish looks need more blush, sophisticated adult looks less, though they may need more mascara. I learned that a business card, held against the temple, prevents eyeshadow overshoot. ‘Eyebrows,’ the workshop leader said, ‘are a whole other world.’ Watching her manipulate her brushes, her eyeliner applicator, I remembered how ...”

“... called madness. Prideaux writes of his paranoia, but – one neurosis not excluding another – he may also have suffered from manic depression. Periods of intense productivity rapidly succeeded others of total fallowness; amiability followed reclusiveness and misanthropy. ‘I never go anywhere. I hate human beings,’ he told Isadora Duncan. One might say ...”