“... in this book is very doubtful. When you listen to the arguments in Measure for Measure, you may be impressed by the Duke’s grand formulation of the Contemptus mundi: there are ways of dealing with the fear of death, and the Duke specifies some of them, but Claudio is closer to the real thing and speaks like a man with a dread of it in his ...”

“... on the surface. Evelyn Waugh said he was ‘exquisitely entertaining’, but this is ambiguous: he may have meant that Russell was a figure of fun, like William Boot. When Russell died in 1947 he was described in the Times as ‘that most endearing of Somerset farmers’ – the best tribute they could come up with. Russell was ever a countryman, proud of his ...”

“... imaginable. Beneath this welter of information the reader, especially the average literary reader, may well feel Gradground out of comprehension: the issue of ‘the way of life’ seems for long periods to have been totally forgotten. Yet Ladurie does once again have a story to tell, and once again it is one of considerable interest and provocation, even to ...”

“... a gathering doubt about the point of sustaining an imperial-style monarchy, coupled with what may be the final collapse of the royal family as an even faintly plausible symbol of what is best in national life – Linda Colley’s book is an essential prehistory of this whole (though not wholly melancholy) catalogue of anxieties. The British, Colley ...”

“... the other the valuable initial glow of creation. Between the two most writers oscillate; some may incline more towards the Shelleyan idea, others more to Horace’s labor limae. But most know that both the delight of the donnée and the less joyous pleasures of revision actually work together. Valéry thought poorly of the initial flourish, what you were ...”

“... particles, but not one that has been so well recognised by Nobel prizes.’ The Nobel prizes may be delayed for a while because the ‘discovery’ is far from secure. For a start, some have argued that String Theory, currently popular as a Theory of Everything, would ‘smear out’ any singularity. (Hawking notes this, but has a distaste for String ...”

“... of ideas she ever encountered, or whether her determination that ‘the invidious censures which may ensue from striking into a path of literature rarely trodden by my sex, will not ... keep me mute in the cause of liberty and virtue’ had been forged earlier than this, and independently. Whatever the answer, the rigidity of her ideas undoubtedly limited ...”

“... but that the appetite for conspiracies is insatiable – that’s why there are so many. This may well be a post-Kennedy perception, part of what the death caused rather than of what caused it. But against that we have to set everything we know about Oswald, let alone anyone else. He liked conspiracies, even if he wasn’t in one, even if he had to run ...”

“... to go to England should the rebellion be successful). Many Jacobites had followed them and some may have ‘pined by Arno’ for their ‘lovelier Tees’ – though that was just Macaulay’s Whiggish gloss. Several seem to have settled down quite happily in the milder climate. But the diplomats were kept busy by the rumours of plots and ...”

“... to cover. But it also indicates the renewed marginalisation of architects in urban planning. It may seem otherwise. Do stars like Rogers not bestride the world, presiding over the layout of city extensions, airports and grands projets? Have Paris and Barcelona, to name but two, not earned income as well as prestige from a monumentled policy of ...”

“... no longer applied, and Robert Harley, the brilliant minister who investigated the Memorial, may have been bluffing when he wrote in 1702 that there remained ‘sufficient authoritys given by the Laws in being for suppressing’ seditious print. But new patches were being stitched onto the quilt. Anne’s reign started with a royal proclamation ‘for ...”

“... more specific about him to put on her form, looked me up and down and wrote ‘executive’, which may or may not have been the case.The hutments, Geraldine explained, were temporary housing. They consisted of single-storey dwellings built, according to a surveyor’s report, ‘with slight weatherboarding’ on the outside ...”

“... anyone it can accuse of spreading ‘chaos and disorder’. The blunt rhetoric of its communiqués may be refreshing after the speeches of Mubarak, his son Gamal and the industrialists who dominated the ruling National Democratic Party, with their formulaic promises of reform and their talk of the nobility of the Egyptian people but ten days ago in Tahrir ...”

“... dependent on a technology – the codex – which is rapidly being superseded? The explanation may well be this prosaic: Consumed, with its narrative cat’s cradle tightly woven around putatively anthropophagic husband-and-wife French philosophers, wouldn’t be easy to pitch to Hollywood execs. In order for someone to green-light a movie of this ...”

“... The two great hopes of this new breed, Cem and Dervis, would not join forces, for reasons that may never become clear. Cem headed out into the wilderness with a small new fringe party; Dervis joined the CHP (Republican People’s Party), a social democrat grouping descended from the party of Atatürk, one of the last remnants of Turkey’s secular ...”