“... A fairytale, whatever messages may be inserted into it or teased out from it, is a tale of marvels. A cat struts past in boots. A demon swells out from a lamp like steam from a kettle. A princess cannot sleep because a pea below her twenty mattresses is hurting her. A prince is metamorphosed from a frog (the poet Norman MacCaig used to say it would be even better if a frog metamorphosed from a prince ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... There was even a romantic tinge to patronage. The two great loves of Balfour’s life were May Lyttelton, whose early death had robbed him of an intended bride, and Mary Wyndham, Lady Elcho. May’s brother Alfred was appointed Colonial Secretary, and Mary’s brother George was brought into the Cabinet. Under ...”

“... questions Ms Turkle puts to herself. 1968 is the cardinal date in her narrative, and the events of May of that year. That blissful if generally unproductive hiatus in the political life of France has been required to explain rather too much of what has happened in the country since: it is in danger of growing into the creation-myth of present-day France. But ...”

“... speculations. A contemporary explained: ‘In engraving and its operation the process of thought may be carried on with that of the work, and neither be retarded in its progress, by one who is master of his subject in either way. Hence the wild and fanciful theories that emanate from a well stored and imaginative mind.’ Because Blake made his living ...”

“... the amount of attention that has been lavished on the Napoleonic period in its many aspects, it may seem strange that a full life of Field-Marshal Prince Barclay de Tolly has not appeared before now: but it is not difficult to suggest reasons for this. Barclay had a rather dour and in some ways unattractive personality. He had little of the panache of his ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... from Philip IV, also in the female line, but now in the third generation. While the argument may have been relevant in the 1320s, when Philip IV’s last son died, it was meaningless by 1453, after more than a hundred years of war. By then it was obvious that no matter his heredity, a king of England couldn’t be king of France, precisely because he was ...”

“... like Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. ‘Dumb as a rock’ and ‘low IQ’ – he may be the last person on earth who mentions IQ – had no traction, considering that the stars of MAGA include the congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, with their ‘gazpacho police’ and California wildfires started by Rothschild space ...”

“... language I think in,’ and if such a thing exists, the opening sentences of her two novels may well be written in it. The Manningtree Witches begins: ‘A hill wet with brume of morning, one hawberry bush squalid with browning flowers.’ (You can imagine a line break after the comma separating those disconnected images.) The first paragraph of The ...”

“... devolved governments since the National Assembly, now known as the Senedd, was convened in May 1999. During the extended periods when the UK has been under Conservative rule, Welsh Labour has made much of its political integrity and electoral success. Such one-party dominance is rare in democracies and is now coming to an end. After the elections to ...”

“... at those capable of capturing the party for Benn. It has been a successful operation. Tony Benn may be Britain’s first Post-Bourgeois Politician. ‘Post-bourgeois’, a term of art in American political science, describes the politics of the post-industrial society in which acquisitiveness among the increasingly affluent and educated middle classes ...”

“... many sorts of purported objects that are vague and undefined. The critical, scientific philosopher may be content to leave the common man with his vague and untidy ontology: but for his own purposes, the pursuit of a system of the world which shall be simple, comprehensive and precise, he may revise, curtail or add as he ...”