“... pioneer works as S.E. Rasmussen’s astonishingly innovative London: The Unique City (1934) and John Summerson’s now-classic Georgian London (1945). So influential have these books become that, in retrospect, their novelty and audacity are hard to appreciate. But at the time of publication, they were milestones in the history of architecture, showing how ...”

“... seems marvellous, when all the countries surrounding Africa are so forward in comparison,’ John Speke, discoverer of the source of the White Nile, observed. Very much a man of his time, Speke was necessarily less aware than we are today of the diversity of African societies, their extraordinary artistic wealth, and the antiquity of their trade with the ...”

“... adorned with the most precious jewels, and, as we have come to expect, there is plenty of food freely available: The geese roasted on the spit Fly to that abbey, God knows, Crying: ‘Geese, all hot! All hot!’ Although sexual pleasure is secondary in the Dutch Cockaigne texts, here the monks enjoy plenty of it. The abbot gathers the monks to their ...”

“... nihilistic conflict unfolding in Liberia and the surrounding region, involving armed youths moving freely between four countries. The document is an implicit criticism of those in the international community who for years have concentrated on excoriating President Taylor and given the impression that removing one man from power could in itself solve a ...”

“... avoiding paraphrasable meaning altogether. One need only point to the work of Wallace Stevens or John Ashbery to show how successfully some of it sustains our expectations while ultimately refusing to deliver the semantic goods. Having extracted a poem’s point, runs the usual defence of such teasing evasions, readers will have no further use for the poem ...”

“... such an intimate bond between horse and rider’, and with women scarce and horses freely available, it naturally occurred to some officers that there was more than one useful way to mount a horse – or, one may suppose, for those who were ‘straight’, a mare. Frederick the Great’s judgment on a cavalryman who had abused a mare was more ...”

“... scheme, which aimed to support the healthy development of pre-school children by providing local, freely available spaces for play, learning and socialising, as well as professional support and advice for their carers. The funding came from central government, but responsibility for the centres lay with local authorities. I have fond memories of the ...”

“... The 17th-century antiquary John Selden spent his life deciphering Greek inscriptions and interpreting Near Eastern myths. No scholar of his time had more experience with the historical study of material remains; no one knew better how easily a modern intellectual can read too much into an ancient object. As he remarked one day, ‘It was an excellent question of my lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a shoe, which was Mose’s or Noah’s, and wondering at the strange shape and fashion of it: But Mr Cotton, says she, are you sure it is a shoe?’ The 20th-century art historian Martin Kemp has spent his life reconstructing the techniques with which Italian Renaissance artists analysed and represented the natural world: the science of art, as he once called it ...”

“... the editors of the Times Literary Supplement (successively Alan Pryce-Jones, Arthur Crook and John Gross) and indeed held the whole London literary world in contempt as a self-serving clique. He became a lecturer in 1936, already over forty, and a full lecturer at 52. MacKillop deals with this scandalously slow ascent in great detail and with a measure of ...”

“... Left, Michael Walzer, in a work glowingly evoked by the still more eminent liberal philosopher John Rawls, in his aptly entitled The Law of Peoples. Indeed in attacking Iraq, we will be doing no more than completing the vital preventive strike against the Osirak reactor of 1981. Who now complains about that? 4. The Human Costs of War. These are indeed ...”

“... Latin and published, it becomes clear how strange the poet’s Christianity was. The poet is John Milton, and the work is De Doctrina Christiana.De Doctrina Christiana matters because it mattered to Milton. You can ignore it and still enjoy his poetry, but if you become seriously interested in Milton your interest will sooner or later extend to his ...”

“... published an editorial headlined ‘Florida Is Trying to Take Away the American Right to Speak Freely’, which described some of Ron DeSantis’s recent activities. A letter to the editor followed two days later, from Ronald J. Murray of Stamford, Connecticut:Losing the ability to speak freely goes beyond what may be ...”

“... prices too, chief justices, lords lieutenant, lords mayor, George Moore, Sir William Orpen, Sir John Lavery, Walter Osborne, Jack Yeats, my famous namesake his brother Bill, Padraic Colum, John Millington Synge, young painters like Paddy Tuohy who really did paint old J.S. Joyce and died of his own hand, poor Sean ...”

“... a compact book about Rothko’s life and art for Yale’s ‘Jewish Lives’ series, drawing freely on the literary critic James Breslin’s impressive full-length biography of 1993. Unlike Breslin, she has little curiosity about Rothko’s darker side, preferring to see his life as an ongoing quest, as she puts it in her subtitle, ‘towards the light ...”

“... of the writing inspired by the bicentenary of 1789 suggests that the old wounds bleed as freely as ever.’ It is certainly true that the French Government seems to have been anxious enough about re-opening old feuds to settle for a celebration of the bicentennial in the shape of historical soap opera – a decision it would have been easier to mock ...”