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“... bluff,’ one of the characters says. ‘This is Detroit.’ He says this in the midst of a major piece of bluffing. So why is the title card so disturbing? Partly because of the absence of any indication of which facts are at issue. Given the manifest intention of the film to address urgent political and social questions, the effect of the card is to ...”

“... later, Cromwell became Lord Protector. Under the Instrument of Government, devised mostly by John Lambert, his mercurial but talented associate, he ruled until his death in September 1658, assisted by a Council of State, in theory chosen by Parliament but in practice chosen by Cromwell himself from among his friends and relations and army comrades. This ...”

“... them. ‘The monastery of Evesham was suppressed by King Henry VIII … at evensong time,’ John of Alcester recorded, ‘the convent being in the choir at this verse Deposuit potentes, and would not suffer them to make an end.’ Four years into the dissolution, there were few wealthy abbeys left to seize; the very last was Waltham Abbey, on 23 March ...”

“... on lavatory walls. This seems to be the message of ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Up-harsin’, one of John Cheever’s loopy, luminescent, triumphant later stories. The narrator, returning to America after a long absence, enters a stall in the men’s room at Grand Central Station, and there, etched into the marble partition (‘it might have been a giallo ...”

“... at 60. Thomas Pynchon was a relatively young 51 when he won, but by 1988 already the author of his major works. The Foundation nonetheless took a big punt on the genius of Richard Powers, who was awarded his MacArthur in 1989, aged only 32. I haven’t checked, but he is probably the youngest novelist ever to win a fellowship. Generally unknown in 1989, and ...”

“... National animosities found ever increasing expression, as the economic crisis worsened. No major reform plan could get a majority of votes, so the Eighties passed in gridlock. Yugoslavs became increasingly prone to blaming each other. Even so, the increase in nationalism upset many people. In the 1971 census, only 247,000 people had declared their ...”

“... we cared to fire our Polaris missiles at them), this risk is an important one. The second major danger presented by nuclear weapons is vaguer but even more intractable. Perhaps if the Soviet Union and the United States could muster the political good sense and will to re-establish a stable and determinate balance of nuclear threat between them, and ...”

“... to her, the special place which the mining industry occupied in the industrial landscape was a major example of sentimental welfarism ... it had to be fought at any price. Moreover, she saw the political need to defeat the NUM – the Coldstream Guards of organised labour – if she was to succeed in her self-appointed role of kicking the whole trade union ...”

“... awareness of how little of British economic policy is made in Britain; the widening split in both major parties about the kind of future Britain should seek in Europe; 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 ...”

“... young European minds will be drawn magnetically to Britain. British universities continue to be major exporters to traditional Anglophone markets, sustaining an imperial authority long after Empire has vanished. Expatriate Britons and natives who have profitably studied in Britain will be found at leading departments everywhere in North America and ...”

“... fire, killing both parents in the front and wounding one of the six children in the back. The major at the base asked Hondros to delay sending the pictures for ‘a couple of days’, pending some kind of investigation. Hondros’s instinct was to send them and leave it to others to argue the toss. Later that night, with the images safely dispatched, he ...”

“... of Northern Europe into Western Christendom is described, and there are chapters on the three major causes of the movement towards a more diverse identity for Christian believers in different parts of Europe. ‘The Achievement of Gregory the Great’ shows how occasional and piecemeal were the reforms which, taken together, made Gregory effectively the ...”

“... script is the writing of the Indus Valley civilisation of Pakistan, which is now the subject of a major study by Asko Parpola. This attractive and sophisticated writing is known chiefly from the magnificent seal impressions found in the ruins of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and Chanhu-Daro, although economic contacts spread them as far west as Mesopotamia. They date ...”

“... the scurrility and noise that can be dredged up from ancient marginalia. Much sounder to read the major ‘accounts’ of, say, the ‘Reign of Nero’ as projects that speak to the presence of historians in history. Thus Tacitus tells us that Seneca, caught up in the same conspiracy as Lucan, committed suicide by cutting his wrists, ‘but his aged ...”

“... and was praised by scholars including Scaliger, Sidney and Minturno. Pollard’s major innovation is to argue for the impact of Greek tragedy on popular theatre. It has long been recognised that the ‘university wits’ of the generation before Shakespeare had a classical education. The consequences have been looked for in the contribution ...”