“... there has been a tendency to find the key to the universe in the curl of a teenager’s lip, in David Bowie’s lipstick or Janis Joplin’s hair. The shapings of history, the contours of time and place, are to be found in the stirrings of drum and guitar; or, deep as dimples, high as a quiff, on the heads of King and Queen Rockers from this time and ...”

“... the original SDP was incorrigibly Old Labour by Blairite standards. They have more time for David Owen’s later ‘tough love’ posture, though preferring what they call a ‘rounded’ blend of social market and community. Their explicit starting point is Thatcherism, their strategy to ‘move forward from where Margaret Thatcher left off’. Their ...”

“... reduced in scale. In hindsight, the only figure who commands one’s unequivocal admiration is David Steel. Steel was shrewd enough to want the Four to found their own party rather than join the Liberals. He somehow jollied along the grandee Jenkins, made friends of Williams and Rodgers and, incredibly, even supported several years in harness with the ...”

“... days is evident on the scratchy, vivid surface of these pictures. They are glorious in a way. David Hickey, in his Foreword, speaks of how the pictures ‘restore that scene to us where its surface shines and wrinkles, in the midst of New York weather and Sixties fashion, in the tactile grunge of downtown Manhattan and the quotidian tumult of ...”

“... that the revolution at the Portrait Gallery had already begun under Strong’s predecessor, David Piper (who went on to become director of the Fitzwilliam and later the Ashmolean Museums). Piper had, after all, sponsored Strong’s first ‘theatrical’ exhibition, ‘The Winter Queen’, while he was still a junior keeper, encouraged him to start ...”

“... case was promoted by the governor of the principality: Lord Keith, a Jacobite exile and friend of David Hume and James Boswell. Rousseau could hardly have been more fortunate in his protector. For Keith was no longer a fiery Catholic enthusiast for lost causes but a good-natured sceptic, who enjoyed Rousseau’s company, and was not unduly put out by his ...”

“... a change of heart’, and the same heart murmurs can still be heard in a review of a novel by David Garnett in 1931 (‘The non-committal manner is not a change of heart’) and again some years later in an article in Scrutiny: ‘People and civilisations are saved by a change of heart.’ This volume provides a unique opportunity to view Auden’s ideas ...”

“... four prominent businessmen had been appointed or approached to join or advise the Government: Sir David Simon, chairman of BP, to become European competition minister, Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, to lead a Whitehall task force on tax and benefits, Lord Hollick, chairman of United News and Media, to advise on industrial policy, and Peter ...”

“... serve to promote a sense of cultural coherence as a bulwark against Bolshevism. Thus it was, F.L. Lucas laconically reports, that in March 1917, ‘while Russia was tottering into revolution and America preparing for war ... at Cambridge members of the Senate met to debate the formation of an English Tripos.’ Just as world politics colour this highly ...”

“... no new taxes’ Bush, and Bill ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ Clinton. David Schippers, the majority counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, hammered home the point in the course of his peroration during last winter’s impeachment proceedings: ‘The President, then, has lied under oath in a civil deposition, lied under oath in a ...”

“... God’s strength made perfect in human weakness: the Bible story of Gideon, or of the shepherd boy David. For it was the religious anxieties and unanswered questions of this insignificant monk, not the great powers of the world against which elaborate diplomatic, legal and military defences had been erected, which brought ruin to the Pope, to the Church as it ...”

“... be accepted at the outset. Anyone – to be more specific, mountebanks like Daniel Goldhagen and David Cesarani – with not a lot to say, but with a will to dilate about atrocity, can extort a hearing for themselves. Others, with more to say, seem to have a clause in their contracts demanding that they mention it at least once in any article, be it on ...”

“... Cleopatra’s last public appearance in the city of Rome was in the form of a wax model, complete with model asp, carried in the victory parade of Octavian in 29 BC. Octavian – a bloodthirsty ideologue in the civil wars – was by then well on his way to reinventing himself as Rome’s benevolent autocrat, its first (and almost only) ‘good’ Emperor, Augustus ...”

“... dat animum (‘It is the holy love of the fatherland which moves us’). Half a century ago, Dom David Knowles, doyen of humane medievalism, hailed the MGH among the ‘great historical enterprises’, which it certainly was (and is) despite its original nationalist agenda. Medievalist Wissenschaft (the term has scientific connotations largely absent from ...”

“... As the Gothic Revival in architecture reached maturity during the 1840s, painters were encouraged to provide appropriate mural decorations; proponents of classical architecture meanwhile were keenly speculating on the manner in which ancient Greek architecture had been painted. These developments strengthened a growing conviction that great artists should not be engaged in concocting delicacies for private consumption, or competing in the marketplace to catch the attention of fashionable critics, but should instead concentrate on adorning the walls of public buildings with great subjects worthy of Athens or Assisi ...”