“... and arithmetic at a privately run school intended for children who would go into trade. He may have been involved with the short-lived Poet’s School, an academy dedicated to the study of ancient letters established in the city in 1496 by Conrad Celtis, the wandering humanist scholar, who was crowned as imperial poet laureate in Nuremberg when Dürer ...”

“... people in the view; Eva Perón’s afterlife is part of a complex national identity, however one may feel about her or anyone’s politics; the notion of ‘any conceivable form of love’ does not exclude inconceivable forms. Operation Massacre, first published in 1957, with reprints in 1964 and 1969 (a movie was made from the book in 1972), is a classic of ...”

“... had cast a shadow of disapproval over its diminutive, the smile (le sourire). Aristotle may have noted that laughing distinguished mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, but that didn’t mean it was to be encouraged. ‘The passion of Laughter is nothyng but a suddaine Glory arising from the suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves ...”

“... of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, writes that ‘Iraqis may be deeply divided along sectarian, ethnic, tribal and factional lines,’ but they nevertheless ‘have a national consciousness, a great deal of national pride, and they do not want to be “occupied” or have a US presence any longer than ...”

“... Yet these two supreme egotists became as close friends as their personalities permitted, and it may be argued that anyone who is thankful that Britain ended the Second World War on the winning side should count ‘the Prof’ as one of those who helped win it. Adrian Fort, in his good-natured but shrewd biography, comes down on that side of the ...”

“... the Author’s Note, ‘many of the following sketches are purely imaginary. Such truths as they may contain are only half-truths’). Sixty years on, I had forgotten everything about the book except its incidental allusions to Nicolson’s admired friend Lord Eustace Percy, a minor character, but of special interest to me because at the time he was my ...”

“... of pleasing the majority, the American musical seldom has any real political force. So, while it may have political themes and even messages, its overall effect tends to be comforting; when it has had an influence on radical American culture, it has been in secret, or by stealth. If the musical is no different from almost all American drama from O’Neill to ...”

“... of meeting your family and colleagues afterwards, you’d do well to strip off and bathe. (You may wonder whether you need to strip, but the charming detail from Giacomo Jaquerio’s painting that adorns the jacket of Jay Olshansky and Bruce Carnes’s book suggests that this is the convention.) Immortality is not synonymous with eternal ...”

“... the prohibition of the threat or use of force in international affairs. The aberration may be temporary, but there are reasons to believe that something fundamental has changed. The US Government wields more power than any regime since the Roman Empire. With 12 aircraft carriers, the only significant heavy airlift capacity and the only major stocks ...”

“... zero tolerance or homeland security, Ferguson’s description of the American way of condemnation may offer some useful pointers to this country’s future. When it comes to the ‘war on terror’, however, Ferguson is reticent. The subject is given less than a page, and though he allows that prosecuting terrorists is important, he makes the puzzling claim ...”

“... a lot of difference to you, too. But, as I say, you can’t argue with a novel.) Well, then, Grue may or may not be dead, and his death may or may not have been a homicide. Sharpe proposes to find out. (It doesn’t enter her calculations that ...”

“... a title that imposed no obligations whatsoever. So far as Magnificence was concerned, it may have been rather too easy to recognise in the monarch of the play, who declares, ‘Lusty Pleasure is my desire to have,’ the young king who wrote: ‘Pastime with good company/I love, and shall until I die’. It seems to have been written for a London ...”

“... peninsula of Paliki, now attached to Kefalonia, but once, he claims, a separate island. Geologists may manage to prove that Paliki was once detached from Kefalonia, but the description of Ithaca in the Odyssey will still fail to match the geography of the area (Homer’s Ithaca, for example, boasted a ‘well visible mountain’, whereas Paliki is flat). We ...”

“... kill themselves at Guantánamo. The study refers to three confirmed suicides and two deaths that may have been suicides in 2007; it suggests there were at least 120 attempts by inmates to hang themselves in 2003 alone – authorities log these under the heading ‘manipulative self-injurious behaviour’. Fletcher and Stover are worried by the rapid erosion ...”

“... supposed to (Roland Barthes: ‘Is History not simply that time when we were not born?’), and it may have an element of fiction in it. ‘We launched our marriage in guilt,’ Diana says. ‘Everyone had to be listened to, apologised to, thanked for giving us permission to live our lives. On our first day of marriage, starting our honeymoon, all we could ...”