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“... of oure Lady Eton”, in the year 1440.’ So says Mark Dixon in An Eton Schoolboy’s Album. He may or may not have learned much history, but somewhere along the line Dixon, who left Eton in 1980, has learned how to write in an entertaining and elegant way. I find it difficult to judge the impression it might make on the ...”

“... the third and last volume of Roy Fuller’s memoirs, and it takes him up to the end of the war. It may sound ungracious, but I can’t help wondering why I find all three books so appealing that the strong implication of finality seems quite unacceptable. Though literate and pleasantly, even amusingly morose, these are not what are commonly called compulsive ...”

“... Carnegie and his fellow steel magnates. Konrad Lorenz saw humans as ‘killer apes’, which may have explained his own flirtation with the Nazis. Until recently, the study of animal behaviour was little more than a set of loosely-connected anecdotes. It has been transformed by the rebirth of one of the oldest techniques in biology. Comparative anatomy ...”

“... are received ideas about the Nativity narrative that have no warrant in either version. So, it may be asked, who cares? Yet to look into these matters is to come on problems both interesting and intractable and, to some people, important. The trickiest, the best known and perhaps the most important of these is the Virgin Conception, of which more ...”

“... war are not re-staged, perhaps because of the sheer discomfort of full armour. Yet one of these may well have been caused by reaction to the effective and extractive bureaucracy which created Domesday Book. These unpleasant episodes do not disturb the clack of the little mills of English historiography. Only when we turn to late 19th-century labour issues ...”

“... the IRA pursue subversive political aims to a degree not found among Mafia bosses in America, who may even be portrayed at times as American patriots; and they have not enriched themselves. But that might come. One day, just foreseeably, the IRA may be ancient and affluent. Books and films about Mafia episodes tend to ...”

“... Constabulary. Denis Donoghue communicates, but does not enlarge on, the possibility that there may have been a dilemma for his parent here. There was never any doubt in one way as to which side his father was on, together with all the other Catholics of the place – that of the South. But there was a duty that went with the job, and he did it. For this ...”

“... of William Jefferson Clinton than in that of its most esteemed founding father. For whatever else may be accused of falling into decay these days, public mendacity has surely enjoyed a robust revival. The most memorable quotations from our national leaders are no longer the inspirational homilies of a Roosevelt or a Kennedy – ‘You have nothing to ...”

“... Several writers point out that in realistic applications the pursuit of utilitarian consequences may well require the abandonment of any attempt to apply utilitarianism very directly. It is not quite clear what the import of this is supposed to be: the editors clearly think it an embarrassment to the theory, while others, like Hare, find it a positive ...”

“... for granted. During the Seventies, the consensus which sustained it began to break down and it may weaken further in the years ahead. If it does fall apart, the public may lose its unfettered right to medical care: financial obstacles could become as common here as they are in America. Private hospitals and other forms ...”

“... the storm and stress of war has sometimes given women the chance to come forward as leaders. We may think of the semi-deified chieftainess Veleda whom Tacitus describes, in the revolt of the Rhineland Germans against Rome, or of Lalla Fathma, the wrinkled old prophetess who inspired the resistance of the Kabyle tribesmen to Napoleon III. But this book is a ...”

“... The common reader may feel inclined to lay the same embargo on his writers as the Duke in the Elizabethan tragedy on his courtiers. Great tact, and a sustained intellectual animation to balance the much that is repulsive in the theme, were needed to make a very long book about it as attractive, as well as instructive, as this one is ...”

“... than justice, it has typically been associated with stupidity, immorality and bad luck. This may be because beauty has been the only kind of social power monopolised by women; men have often felt resentment or mistrust towards it, but they have not been eager to examine their motives for doing so. A different way of dealing with beauty has been to praise ...”

“... so vividly the contrast between the ideals of a revolution’s makers and the catastrophes it may be fated to endure as do the Great Purges of 1937-38 in the USSR. It was then that Stalin unleashed the NKVD in a murderous onslaught against all key sections of state and society: the Communist Party and the government apparatus, industrial management and ...”

“... and has even offered to negotiate the removal of all the SS20s from Europe. These initiatives may not, as yet, have led to any concrete agreements, nor even to any hard evidence of negotiating progress: but at least negotiations are under way again between the two super-powers, at least the angry exchanges of 1981-82 seem to be behind us, at least there ...”