“... this in spite of a solemn pledge taken at a conference in Wembley to fight the Thatcher employment laws. From then on, Routledge argues, it was clear that the TUC – and thus the bulk of its affiliated unions – was a paper tiger. That is true as far as it goes. Equally important, however, is the fact that at Wembley and elsewhere, the TUC constantly pledged ...”

“... as both a Slavist of great range and scholarship and a theoretical linguist who had rewritten the laws of phonology. This was not at all Bakhtin’s story. He, like Jakobson, was well-born, into what Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, in their clumsily written but valuable biography, call the ‘landless nobility’; his father was an itinerant bank ...”

“... lot of my work, my complex chords contain emotional nuances that are forbidden within the laws of music,’ she said. ‘But craving freshness and also craving to express my emotions – and not knowing the rules – I bypassed them, broke the rules. Because I’m abundantly sensitive, I worked and worked and worked to be able to achieve ...”

“... with what makes a character individual, with place and time and circumstance, with the laws of probability. Unlike 18th-century novels, it seems to have no thought of a wide readership. So while the author would like to amuse, there has been no compromise with the expectations of unenlightened readers. Jacques le fataliste is under no pressure to ...”

“... his dubiously broad sense) has been uprooted. All we are told is that Wittgenstein (along with John Dewey) illustrates the way ‘philosophical reflection which is completely honest can unsettle our prejudices and our pet convictions and our blind spots without flashy claims to deconstruct truth itself or the world itself’. Surely he is a lot more ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... This is not hard to explain. In studies of traditional contraception and abortion practices, John Riddle has demonstrated how often knowledge of therapeutic agents formerly possessed by the folk memory and by medical practitioners has been lost. Urbanisation obliterates hand-me-down lore. Medicine’s growing claims to scientific status result in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”