“... Boston University. The first of them, a satirical attack on The Old Faith and the New, a work of David Strauss’s dotage (1871, English translation 1873), begins with a memorable disclaimer. The German public’s eagerness to infer from the military victory over France a victory over French culture, Nietzsche writes, is a pernicious delusion, ‘not simply ...”

“... imparted a significance to ideas of identity and destiny, and a faith which, whatever else it may have been, was undeniably creative. It would be – indeed has been – convenient to dismiss Speer’s talents and to regard Schmid-Ehmen’s eagles as kitsch. Later in the exhibition we are able to see what Mukhina might have created in the streamlined ...”

“... and routine rather than self-conscious. This does not preclude great accomplishment; in fact it may encourage it. Every day of the year, in every large English cathedral, choral evensong is sung. The core of what the choristers perform was written at a time when these craft traditions were matched by religious belief, by composers like Tallis, Purcell, Byrd ...”

“... That so little has been written on later 19th-century Manchester, despite Taylor’s invitation, may (for once) be blamed on Asa Briggs, whose excellent Victorian Cities (1963) threw historians off the scent by arguing that Manchester, the ‘shock city’ of the first half of the century, had, by 1877, ‘long outgrown the days when it could be described as ...”

“... take in these new opportunities to taste ‘the pleasures of the imagination’. Georgian England may now, in our culture’s memory, be associated with ‘order, stability and decorum’, but ‘contemporaries saw their culture as modern, not traditional, an indication that their society and way of life was changing. It was its dynamism, variety and ...”

“... identity and needs. At last we Scots have had an opportunity to redress our grievances. On 6 May 1999 we cast our votes for the first Scottish Parliament since the Union of 1707. And almost 42 per cent of the electorate stayed at home. It did rain, I suppose. Since the devolution referendum of 1997, media attention has largely focused on the threat posed ...”

“... a low standard of living – unacceptable. In the UK at that time – happy days – there may have been shortages of food and clothing, but there was also an acute shortage of labour. The so-called ‘flood of immigration’ started, first from the Caribbean and then, in the late Fifties and early Sixties, from the sub-continent of India. The numbers ...”

“... that the first modern act of political terrorism in the region was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by Irgun Zvi Leumi under the leadership of Menachem Begin; the assassinations of Lord Moyne, the British Minister Resident, and Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator, by Jewish extremists long preceded that of Anwar Sadat by their Muslim ...”

“... the Beatles, they are post-Marxist in the sense that the Internet comes after the Somme. Hall may dislike trendy theories, but this is a bit like Jeffrey Bernard campaigning against drinking clubs. Whatever his reservations, he does stand for all the Right Things in the arena of cultural studies: impeccably ...”

“... only about fashion but about sexual identity, national culture and art history. My slow awakening may well be typical. Whatever their knowledge of the great dress designers – from Worth and Doucet through Poiret and Schiaparelli to Westwood and Miyake – I do not think that many people could name a great tailor or men’s clothes designer who flourished ...”

“... Hebrew prayers on stage with a kippah on his head, wore a blazer decorated with the Star of David and, after school, went to classes on the Koran. After his mother died of cancer Begg spent some time being looked after by his father’s non-Muslim girlfriend, Josephine, who introduced him to Christmas stockings, Christmas pudding with silver ...”

“... writes, ‘became a pattern that would allow Jack to pursue a political career . . . Between May 1955 and October 1957, while he was launching his Vice-Presidential and Presidential bids, he was secretly hospitalised nine times.’ Here is Dallek’s depiction of Kennedy’s health at an early point in his Presidency: The bone loss and destruction in ...”

“... prostitutes and taking endless shots of dusty people unable to get up off the pavement. I may be alone in disliking this series. At any rate, Cartier-Bresson’s various visits to Mexico were considered fruitful enough to merit a discrete volume (Mexican Notebooks, 1995). But compared to the work of Mexican photographers – Manuel and Lola Álvarez ...”

“... abuses, let alone the Rabaa massacre or the mass imprisonment and torture of dissidents. When David Cameron held a meeting with Sisi in New York in September he spoke of ‘Egypt’s pivotal role in the region’ and its importance to British policy. ‘Both economically and in the fight against Islamist extremism’, he said, Egypt was a crucial ally and ...”

“... from Paris, about 150 km upstream, and the river had been swollen for a while. People in Paris may have been nervous, but by and large they put their trust in news from the national Hydrometric Service. Agents working for the service usually sent reports from their stations by cable, but on 20 January water breaking over the banks of the Loing had brought ...”