“... of legitimate concern. A similar debate is needed in Britain, as an increasing number of national laws are adopted off the back of international norms which have often been negotiated by the executive in circumstances in which the legislature plays no role. It is also important to be clear about the limited function of global rules, especially those that ...”

“... and imitated ‘superior’ Italian humanism. In this she is following the lead of the late John Hale, whose last book, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance, let the Danube School of artists, Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Altdorfer, share space with Leonardo et al. Rublack’s quest has taken her to fascinating primary sources in German ...”

“... partnership in the Palace of Westminster, and his latest book tells the story of James Pratt and John Smith, the last men to be executed for sodomy in Britain. Pratt was a servant and Smith a labourer; both were out of work when they were arrested, and only Pratt knew how to write. Pratt was 32 and Smith forty. Pratt was married with a daughter; Smith was ...”

“... tried to browbeat Cony into submission, then threw him in prison. Cony’s lawyer, the eminent Sir John Maynard, demanded that he be set free, and the judges in the case were minded to release him, invoking the provisions of Magna Carta against imprisonment without trial. The Great Oliver then committed Maynard to the Tower, summoned the judges and told them ...”

“... Peter Chamberlen’s The Poore Mans Advocate (1649), Peter Cornelius Plockhoy (1659), John Bellers’s Proposals for Raising a College of Industry (1695), and two essays by an anonymous Hermeticist, Philadept, published in 1698 and 1700. Many in this last group were discussed in 1952 by J.K. Fuz in a pioneering work, Welfare Economics in English ...”

“... if ‘a man, a dog, or a cat escape quick out of the ship’, then it was subject to the usual laws of ownership. The merchants who had shipped the cargo should pay the salvagers ‘convenient for their travail’ in recovering it, but they were entitled to have their goods back in full if crewmen survived. Only if a ship was fully abandoned or the crew ...”

“... of enthusiasm of the annus mirabilis, 1650, with its heresiarchs, prophets and messiahs, with John Robins and Thomas Tany, with its ‘witchcraft fits’ and speaking with tongues, provided the odium of example which sobriety needed. Davis has therefore written a book which is silly and unnecessary. No one has ever pretended that the Ranters were ...”

“... ambitions could ignore the deeply ingrained racism of Illinois. The state’s notorious Black Laws denied Blacks basic rights, and racist language suffused politics. In the 1858 debates during the campaign for one of Illinois’s seats in the Senate, Lincoln’s antagonist, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, freely used the word ‘nigger’ and accused Lincoln ...”

“... the Department of Trade and Industry or the Ministry of Defence – they were lectured about the laws of the marketplace. Good riddance, too, was the message for Westlands from the other big helicopter-makers of Europe. Fewer and fewer helicopters were needed, because fewer and fewer people (or countries) could afford them. There was what businessmen call ...”

“... the most deliberate experimentation. We are in a region where one is tempted to say there are no laws. But there are: their presence is only to be inferred from what we can tell is an offence against them, or what we recognise as a triumphant observance. Writing is full of unwritten laws, and attempts at codification can ...”

“... it had published which described Jesus having sex with a variety of men, including Pontius Pilate. John Mortimer and Geoffrey Robertson appeared for the defence, but lost. Gay News was fined and its publisher given a suspended prison sentence. ‘I have an open mind about queer-bashing,’ Waugh’s diary reflected, ‘from one point of view it seems rather ...”

“... of Fox into a strong coalition government; instead, he formed a weak, untalented administration John Ehrman’s final volume deals with the years from 1797 to Pitt’s death early in 1806. His biography is on a scale which might be called ‘Victorian’ except that most of the great biographies of Victorian politicians appeared in this century. According ...”

“... till blood and froth stood on his chin. The froth stands when the cousin falls, and even the laws of gravity seem upset. ‘Jim said little when his kin/found a place to place him in’.: the original shock of witnessing the seizures compounds Murray’s horror at a family which could simply institutionalise Jim, which fell down where it should have ...”

“... The pogrom in Limerick, which took place in 1904, was incited by the fiery preaching of Father John Creagh to the arch-confraternity: The Jews came to Limerick apparently the most miserable tribe imaginable ... but now they had enriched themselves and could boast of very considerable house property in the city. Their rags have been exchanged for ...”

“... in East Anglia. After his enthusiasm for this sort of thing came to light, the Sun contacted John Hanson, one of the book’s authors, who declared that ‘any sensible person’ would be interested in a phenomenon ‘that has baffled mankind for millennia’.The extent to which Philip was a sensible person remains open to debate, but as a UFO buff who ...”