“... do much to still doubts or to fill out the story Macfarlane wants to tell. The casus belli in the war of Macfarlane versus Lawrence Stone, R.H. Tawney, Rodney Hilton, George Homans, Christopher Hill, C.H. Wilson, C.B. Macpherson (and long-dead greats such as Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Tonnies) is his answer to the question of why fully-fledged ...”

“... always been hard, and it is still scarcely what one would call technical. Until the Second World War, it was largely a matter of comforting and consoling, so few were the diseases that could be treated by drugs. Now it is still largely a matter of comforting and consoling, but for the opposite reason: so much acute disease has, at least for the moment, been ...”

“... years in that country, after leaving Russia, pushing Spanish Bibles aggressively in hostile, war-torn Roman Catholic territory: the priests and politicians wanted him to take his ‘Jewish books’ away. The Bible in Spain was a great hit with the militant churchgoers of Britain. But then Borrow’s publisher persuaded the Protestant hero to attempt ...”

“... the stronghold of Riyadh from his family’s Turkish-backed rivals, the Rashids, and proceeded, by war and diplomacy, to recover all the former Saudi dominions and much else besides. By 1913, he controlled the Gulf coast from Kuwait to Qatar, having eliminated the Turks from el Hasa – now the Eastern Province, where, in the 1930s, the world’s largest oil ...”

“... it in what will soon be the 21st century can no longer be determined by the standards of the post-war consensus years. The very polarities which have proved their premise right are also proving many of their conclusions wrong. No iron law makes a written constitution and a Bill of Rights dependent on each other. A constitution is the set of arrangements for ...”

“... shored up a potent popular nationalism which, unharnessed, might easily have recoiled on the class-state that had ridden it to victory in 1815. Burke sensed this possibility acutely and devoted his efforts to stabilising the old spirit of tumult and insurrection. As he understood, more was required than success and foreign conquests to fasten it in ...”

“... 1997 and 2004, the number of teachers per student declined by 30 per cent, with 80 students per class in government schools and 40 per class in UNRWA schools. Test scores for Palestinian children are well below the pass level, and the majority of eight-year-olds fail to advance to the next grade. About 42 per cent of ...”

“... that would have dismayed many of her admirers. She didn’t live in Brompton with her upper-middle-class (though poor) parents, but in Chelsea. After her father died in 1824, the money she made by her writing supported both her mother and her brother. Yet she appeared quite carefree, adopting romantic dress and seeming to pay little regard to how immodest or ...”

“... of detachment and satisfaction. Rohmer​ was born in 1920 in Tulle and grew up in a middle-class Catholic family. His father was a civil servant; his mother looked after her two boys and worried above all about the importance of a good education. The younger brother, Réné, was a brilliant pupil but Maurice’s shyness and stammer held him back. He ...”

“... of Battleship Potemkin – they feared the film might set a bad example for their own working class – and eventually had the Russians expelled from the country. Rather than return home, however, in April 1930 Eisenstein signed a six-month contract with Paramount; he and his team sailed for the US the following month. He suggested making films of ...”

“... obliged to protect Egypt’s security after all – and applauded by the revolution-weary middle class. But the armed forces can’t hope to impose military rule, and any coup will be carried out in collaboration with whichever political faction seems most likely to be able to restore stability. Shoring up the Muslim Brotherhood is one option. Recasting old ...”

“... the Bush administration and fellow conservatives on the court – he insisted that a government at war had two, and only two, ways to hold a citizen: try him in a court of law or have Congress suspend the writ of habeas corpus; live by the rules of due process or suspend them. But the court weaselled out of that choice, making life easier for the government ...”

“... that again.’ Kerouac soon put Glassman in a novel, describing her as ‘a Jewess, elegant middle-class sad and looking for something’. ‘Sad’ was one of Kerouac’s favourite words. Desolation Angels joined the manuscripts of half a dozen other much rejected books written in the manner he urged on Glassman – in a passionate headlong rush of ...”

“... won all the prizes and ended up with identical marks when they qualified simultaneously with first-class honours from medical school. On graduation day in 1923 the class piled into the Kirkgate Bar across from Aberdeen’s Marischal College. Ricky had got to the counter but Allan was still at the door when an emissary from ...”

“... Ugandan tribal chieftains reacted to independence in the same way. Opponents in the Angolan civil war of the 1990s slaughtered witches, in the belief that this gave them political legitimacy. Far from being an inert feature of unchanging primitivism, witch beliefs are animated by the unease aroused by periods of transition, especially to economic ...”