“... at Bradford, Rochdale and Colchester, a tower was essential. ‘Useless and extravagant’ they may have been, with their pinnacles, turrets, spires and cupolas, decorated with sculpture, statuary, battlements and gargoyles. But, like church spires, these town hall towers expressed the sentiments of their builders, and articulated a powerful system of ...”

“... is right there on the podium, just a stone’s throw away, surrounded by a crowd of 20,000 who may claim the status of longtime fans or enthusiastic converts. It should have been predictable that Trump would make no concessions to the pandemic. Without a pause or explanation, he continued the mass events that have kept his voter base eager through every ...”

“... supporting the group by supporting activities that Hamas would also be expected to support.In May 2024 activists in London unfurled a banner showing a giant dove carrying a key and flying through a breach in Israel’s apartheid wall. A police officer noticed that the dove was flying in what he described as ‘a clear blue sky with no clouds’. In the ...”

“... and a rationalist, who never lost his equilibrium.’ Rationality, we are invited to conclude, may be good for you in doses but can wither the spirit; beyond a certain point its study becomes the province of moral pathology. It has not always been thought so, but there would be few dissenters nowadays. So when ...”

“... revelation’, ‘inner light’ and ‘visible and sensible communion with the angels’ may be appealing as dogmas of dissent, but they are of little help as guidelines of organisation. Infuriatingly if predictably, Utopia turns out to be an objective more utopian than utilitarian. Not surprisingly, then, the names of sects like the ...”

“... and ice’. The Establishment, he says, was ‘determined that, come what may, the Duke of Windsor should never return to live in England, or ever recover any work, influence or honour’. Bloch selects the evidence to support his view. The Windsors’ wedding, he notes, was ‘boycotted’ by the Palace: the only present from the King ...”

“... by an independent commission for improving the quality of publicly funded advocacy, but Theresa May sacked him before he could put them into practice. Liz Truss showed barely any interest in the job. David Lidington came and went without a trace in just seven months. David Gauke, a ...”

“... a watery death. This seems like a statement as much about the man as about his artfulness. So, we may think, is the claim that Dickens’s novels, hampered by Victorian propriety, ‘cannot face up to the truth of sexual desire’. To be sure, there is an identifiable trick or ploy in the offing. Dickens, like other Victorian novelists, made a vice out of a ...”

“... economic department during the upswing, and took no action to avert the crisis before it broke. It may or may not have been his fault. The fact remains that, after two years in the Treasury, the basic assumptions underlying his management of the economy were in ruins. His unnecessary resignation after a trivial breach of ...”

“... with mild grey streets, to the veiled lustre of the Forth and the pale gold lands beyond, may under certain skies be revealed in such kindliness that urbanity puts on a pastoral light and one can almost hear the bleating of sheep, and yet be not moved to cry Absit omen ... But once in alternate years there is a Saturday morning when Edinburgh is ...”

“... interpretation of Berkeley’s position, because it credits him with a view of perception which may be ours but certainly is not his. His view was one that could hardly have been formulated in this century. He began by arguing that the perceptible qualities which the materialist attributes to physical objects are all in the mind of the perceiver. According ...”

“... the reason oligarchies fail in the end: the public tires of being treated in this way. Democracy may well be bubbling up in Russia in ways that the elite will eventually be unable to control. But until they lose control, there is no doubt about who is in charge. If Britain is turning into an oligarchy, as Ferdinand Mount claims, then it’s nothing like the ...”

“... Wilkin’s selection of 27 articles offer a reasonable overview of Dupin’s analysis. Readers may, however, be perplexed by their argument that Dupin’s ‘Enlightenment feminism’ was limited by remainingembedded in contemporary white feminism, in which middle-class and wealthy white women aspire to the goods and prestige the most fortunate white men ...”

“... of myself as white. In an era in which many people lament the tyranny of identity politics, it may seem healthy that the state should discourage racial or ethnic identification.Yet since returning to France twenty years later, I have become disillusioned with French pseudo-universalism. Official colour blindness did not prevent the National Rally, a party ...”

“... blame Lord Bragg for his confusion: when Smith took over the post from Virginia Bottomley in May 1997, he was officially in charge of National Heritage, a department which had subsumed the Arts after the 1992 election. In the old days – who can forget Colin Moynihan? – Sport was a sub-directory of Education, and Media was nowhere. And just to ...”