“... the underclass who encroached on the privilege of the royal forests and became victims of the game laws. When Harrison writes about outlaws – Gamelyn, Robin Hood and their successors in Elizabethan comedy – it is easy for the politically-sound critic to suppose that he can become a Green Man and still be a Red. So too in the section on John ...”

“... before he became one of the Assembly’s three presidents, is that what Colombia needs is not new laws but the will to apply them. There are signs that the will may be developing. Extensive frauds have been uncovered in the social security system, and in the public services of Colombia’s main port, Barranquilla. The newspapers are exposing corruption with ...”

“... with ministers who were either secret Communists or Communist sympathisers. Given the fierce libel laws in this country there was no way such allegations could be published in the normal manner. Instead MI5 leaked the smear to journalists who obligingly wrote stories hinting at the substance, while sometimes hypocritically expressing their distaste: ‘some ...”

“... which emasculated Labour local authorities; no change in the draconian Tory anti-union laws, no change in anything. The great irresponsible monopolies derided by Brown in his youth have become the great allies of New Labour. Brown’s chief man in the Treasury is his friend and generous host Geoffrey Robinson, whose enormous wealth is stashed away ...”

“... public burthens lightened, economy seated as it were upon a rock, the gordian knot of the poor laws not cut but untied – all by a simple idea in architecture’ Not just prisons but schools, madhouses, hospitals, reformatories and workhouses – all were erected in the sanguine faith that for every problem there was an institutional panacea. Indeed, to ...”

“... of years, but during the quarter century before 1859 more than a dozen northern states enacted laws to conceal their hangings behind prison walls. The courtroom drama was replacing the gallows ritual in the public imagination – and the 26 sentences Brown spoke after the white jury found him guilty secured his place in national legend. Ralph Waldo Emerson ...”

“... and law, but in his own day was a controversial figure. The Provençal rabbi Abraham ben David (‘Rabad’) criticised him for, among other things, his insistence that God is not embodied. After his death in 1204, Jews living in Montpellier helped persuade the Christian authorities to burn copies of his greatest philosophical work, The Guide to the ...”

“... for the fourth time in its brief history, to prevent the resignation of the first minister, David Trimble. Just over a year later, on 26 November 2003, the much postponed Assembly election took place, with the DUP and Sinn Féin emerging as the largest parties, gaining ground from moderate unionists and nationalists. A review of the working of the Good ...”

“... translation. Jeffrey Bernstein has the wordier ‘Which of these two ways is without evil?’ David Mulroy, the punchier ‘Can either choice be right?’ Agamemnon is in a position where there is no right answer, no guiltless way to act.The terrible moment is figured as in part a choice, in part an act of compulsion: Agamemnon ‘placed his neck beneath ...”

“... their ambitions’. But to overestimate their knowledge of and interest in (for example) the laws of optics and aesthetic theory would be to ‘sidetrack an investigation’ and lead to ‘a misapprehension’ of the nature of the Carracci reform. Goldstein examines, as others have, the meanings which can be given to the general thesis that the Carracci ...”

“... stretching upwards, but perhaps true ambition has a pair of silent claws. None of us identified David Cameron as the boy marching inexorably towards Downing Street. When he became Tory leader in 2005, I had difficulty recalling him: wasn’t he that affable, sweet-faced, minor fellow at the edge of things? I remembered him as quite handsome, with the ...”

“... War. Hersh wanted the story to speak for itself. He finally gave it to the independent journalist David Obst’s Dispatch News Service. Thirty-six newspapers picked up the story, but the New York Times wasn’t among them; Time, Newsweek and the television networks ignored it. Self-censorship was pervasive. The Washington Post was an exception: the Post’s ...”

“... lightens the darkness of Pinocchio’s experiences with his jaunty tunes and simple moral laws. Take the straight and narrow path And if you start to slide Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! And always let your conscience be your guide. In Carlo Collodi’s original, there is no time or inclination for moral whistling. Peasant Tuscany in ...”

“... the murder of her husband by her lover. ‘We seldom can, they are moulded for us – just by the laws and rules and conventions of this world.’ Thompson wasn’t wrong about the way in which women’s lives are made to fit particular shapes: the press dubbed her the ‘Messalina of Ilford’, after the ‘promiscuous’ wife of Emperor Claudius, killed for ...”

“... and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David Miliband, and sees Blair’s election as leader as an epochal event, finally settling Labour’s commitment to social democracy. All of which sounds very much as if Hutton hopes to become a key adviser in a future Blair administration, though the Tories may ...”