“... The classic theoretician of Muslim society is lbn Khaldun (1332-1406), whom, along with Hume, Robert Montagne and Evans-Pritchard, Gellner acknowledges as his major influence. Ibn Khaldun’s most celebrated theory, based on a profound understanding of Islamic history and a practical knowledge of North African politics, concerns the circulation of ...”

“... report (mostly rather woodenly) from various European countries on the progress of the legend. Robert Escarpit feels that Byron has not mattered much to Frenchmen, except to Jules Verne and himself. But in Poland he has meant a great deal, as a model Romantic nationalist: indeed, you catch the 19th-century poet Adam Mickiewicz and the 20th-century scholar ...”

“... Of course, the threat may have looked larger than it was. Woolrych reveals that one regiment, Robert Lilburne’s, was already in mutiny at the time of Putney, although, since its hazy demands included the restoration of the King, its grievances were unlikely to be appeased by the airing of Leveller republicanism at the Army Council. Cromwell gave ...”

“... lie look ashamed. Henry does it with style.’ All over today’s Washington there are men – Robert McNamara, William Colby of the CIA, George Ball of the State Department – who have written memoirs and given interviews which try to atone for past crimes and blunders. Kissinger, no doubt, would regard even the smallest exercise in atonement as ...”

“... windows, and kicked in the metal, bawling and spitting at the alarmed passengers cowering inside. Robert Johnston’s murder, in the broad daylight of Rottenrow, brought a great deal of feeling against Irish Catholics and their Glaswegian offspring, some of which has never entirely gone. The riot in the East End seemed, to many, like the behaviour of a ...”

“... to the Freeze generation. The names he mentions, especially Josef Beuys and Bruce Nauman, but also Robert Gober, Ashley Bickerton and Jeff Koons, certainly make sense when we look at much of the work on show in Sensation – although, naturally enough, everything that the Young British Artists (more affectionately known as YBAs) absorbed has been given a ...”

“... differently.’Analogy – Nero for George I, say, or the Roman imperial enforcer Sejanus for Sir Robert Walpole – was one way of speaking in order to be understood differently. Others were allusion, ellipsis, circumlocution, irony (including mock forms such as mock epideixis, elaborately praising something unpraiseworthy so as to undermine it) and ...”

“... Such a shift would face hostility from many in the party, though its more eccentric elements, like Robert Halfon, have already praised Johnson for establishing a ‘moderate social democratic state’. Keynesians exist on the right as well as the left.There are few precedents for the political consequences of pandemic: the last, a century ago, arrived well ...”

“... There hasn’t been so dashing a male fantasy figure, both footloose and dependable, since Robert Kincaid in The Bridges of Madison County. When not working in war zones, he takes children on wilderness trips and encourages them to practise ‘loss-proofing’. The key to individual survival is prioritising the needs of the group. Not everything is an ...”

“... possibility is that this is the essence of libertarianism. One book not discussed by Chafkin is Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia, which has been widely influential in Silicon Valley since its publication in 1974. Nozick argues that the powers of the state can’t be justified for anything except the protection of private property. Tax-raising is ...”

“... vast readership once he left the scene, but here too things didn’t work out as planned. In 1967, Robert Hill, an editor at Pope’s American publisher, J.B. Lippincott, decided to give another writer he’d spotted a chance to fill the gap in the market. He wrote to Patrick O’Brian, who duly signed a contract headed: ‘Untitled novel about an 18th-century ...”

“... the Daleks were made the subject of two big storylines in the relaunched Doctor Who. In the first, Robert Shearman’s ‘Dalek’, the last living representative of the race is tortured by American operatives in orange boilersuits at an underground facility; he falls in love with Rose, the new Doctor’s main assistant, and comes to understand his ...”

“... Russia and Western Europe into an obedient lawn. For Putin, so far, the space is Ukraine. For her, Robert Burns’s evil ‘Auld Kate’, it was Poland, though not the compact Polish state of today. It was the enormous, ramshackle Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the ancient Rzeczpospolita or ‘kingly republic’. Its borders changed erratically, but most of ...”

“... failing to intercede on the victims’ behalf. This was the line taken in Massacre in Rome (and in Robert Katz’s book on which the film was based). Cosmatos and his producer, Carlo Ponti, were prosecuted for ‘defaming the memory of the pope’ and received six-month suspended sentences.Even more astonishing were the legal proceedings in 1994 against ...”

“... NoViolet Bulawayo​ intended to write a non-fiction account of the 2017 coup that deposed Robert Mugabe and made Emmerson Mnangagwa, his one-time deputy, the third president of Zimbabwe. But she couldn’t keep up with the changing political situation. There was a sense of bitterness: the coup wasn’t the new beginning many had hoped for ...”