“... Saladin, drank nothing stronger than sherbet. Later yet, in the 1260s, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars took steps to prevent the consumption of alcohol in his army. If Yasir Suleiman means that the history of the Crusades has been skewed by failure to make sufficient use of sources in Arabic, then he is certainly correct. Hillenbrand has performed a great service ...”

“... part of the Northwest Passage, the so-called ‘Arctic Grail’. From Martin Frobisher in 1576 to John Franklin in 1845, generations of European explorers searched for a navigable route through the Arctic islands to Asia. Many of them – including Franklin and his men – died in the attempt. Their greatest challenge was sea-ice, which has almost always ...”

“... history of nighttime, which draws on accounts of the dark in early modern Europe. In a recent LRB John Demos pondered the perils of popular history, in which events constantly drive the story onwards, in which interpretations receive short shrift, in which character and personality trump situation and circumstance. Ekirch has written a book that anybody with ...”

“... In 1944 and 1945, John Brinckerhoff Jackson surveyed the French and German countryside for the advancing US army. At the military intelligence training centre in Maryland, Jackson had been taught to see the territory he surveyed as an empty stage on which certain choreographed actions were to be performed, and others improvised in the event that the enemy, or the land itself, threw up surprises ...”

“... the latter. Butler also wants to argue, however, that although a recognisably modern society took shape in America during the ‘provincial decades’ following initial colonisation (1680-1770), the distinctive traits, attitudes and habits of mind that formed the ‘American character’ came later. Here he agrees with Appleby, who suggests that the ...”

“... concerns of the one-time infant prodigy who, after his youthful dalliance with ideology, took his manager wife and their eight children on an upward social trajectory, seem to have been hard work and sound professional practice. A self-portrait of 1880, requested of the maestro by the Uffizi, records a bland incurious glance at the mirror; but that ...”

“... a redistricting map that sews up the outcome of a congressional election. In 2019, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that although the Supreme Court ‘does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering’, any court-mandated intervention in district maps would inevitably look partisan and impugn the court’s neutrality. In 2017, during arguments in a ...”

“... that Roth resolved never to write about Jews again. Of course he did, but from that point on he took pleasure in defying any party line. With a little effort you could make this sound like a triumph for the welcoming committee at Yeshiva. He had to abandon his assumption that the best way to be 100 per cent American was to be 100 per cent Jewish, and the ...”

“... We are living through a great era of saint-making. Under John Paul II an industrial revolution has overtaken the Vatican, an age of mass production. Saints are fast-tracked to the top, and there are beatifications by the bucket-load. It seems a shame to have all the virtues required for beatification, but not to get your full name in the Catholic Almanac Online ...”

“... may have made Gaskell up altogether. The parsonage hall is accurately rendered; perhaps Hassall took it from life.It’s not a particularly remarkable image, just the sort one comes across by accident, one of the many that illustrated the Brontës’ novels and books about them, as well as romances of famous lives, histories of great authors, worthies of ...”

“... When​ T.S. Eliot asked John Hayward in February 1938 to act as his literary executor (‘in case some unexpected calamity cuts me down like a flower’), he told him to prevent publication of his literary remains – including ‘any letters at all of any intimacy to anybody’. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I have a mania for posthumous privacy ...”

“... in the 1990s was self-imposed. But as Georgina Born makes clear in her definitive analysis of the John Birt and Greg Dyke eras, the consistent impetus came from government. It’s no surprise that Margaret Thatcher wanted to take on the BBC – if anything, the surprise is how long it took her. (In her first ...”

“... or ‘neo-authoritarian’, what is indisputable is that it has unleashed what John Ganz has called a sense of ‘moral anarchy’, in which there are no longer any limits to the expression of sadism, or to its implementation as policy. Children are forcibly separated from their parents. Migrants from Venezuela are flown to a concentration ...”

“... MacArthur won his many medals – relatively brief exposures, with MacArthur picking when they took place, buoyed by adrenalin and his public role – more closely resembles the courage needed by the war correspondents by whom he was usually surrounded in the field. A different kind, seldom recognised by medals or publicity, is asked of those who, when ...”

“... The trial​ of Argentina’s military leaders took place in Buenos Aires between April and September 1985. The court heard evidence against the nine most senior figures in the regime, including three former presidents – Videla, Viola and Galtieri. Sittings began each day in the early afternoon and often went on until after midnight ...”