“... day I remember how precarious the talks had been. Reading an article in the Daily Telegraph where David Trimble concludes his argument for a Yes vote by saying ‘we must have confidence in ourselves to face the future, not use the troubles of the past as a comfort blanket,’ I wonder how many Unionists will follow his advice. The vote will be Yes, but he ...”

“... over its old rivals; its law was the supreme form of law and could override other forms; the king could not abrogate or make exemptions from it. Did this mean that Parliament was sovereign? Blackstone in the 1760s, Burke and Bentham in the 1770s, answered ‘yes’. Those who answered ‘no’ deserve more respect than either Burke or Bentham gave ...”

“... be tyrants,’ a capacity seized on by Hamlet in staging the play that catches the conscience of King Claudius. George Buchanan, James I’s tutor, saw the depiction of tyranny in his own tragedies as an instrument of James’s education. The blunt couplets of The Mirror for Magistrates supplied vivid warnings of the destruction that awaits kings and ...”

“... on peoples accustomed to the autonomy afforded them by Ottoman weakness. ‘It was evident,’ David Fromkin wrote in his fascinating study A Peace to End All Peace (1989), ‘that London either was not aware of, or had given no thought to, the population mix of the Mesopotamian provinces.’ Gertrude Bell was certainly familiar with the population mix of ...”

“... thousands of Arabs to flee by the only escape route – the sea.’ Two Zionist writers, Jon and David Kimche, described what happened to the local Palestinians when Dayan and his troops ‘drove at full speed into Lydda, shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population ... Its Arab population of 30,000 either fled or ...”

“... low-profile, best-selling author of some of the most remarkable historical fiction of the century. David Sweetman met Mary Renault in 1981, when he interviewed her for the BBC; he had been under the spell of her books since he read them as ‘an awkward, insecure teenager’. He brings to the art of biography a well-intentioned gentleness that is rare; but it ...”

“... ambition and postponed satisfaction, duty and patriotism.’ It is on this aspect that Anthony King and Ivor Crewe concentrate in the Skidelsky collection. Margaret Roberts moved from her Anglo-Poujadist origins via Oxford, the lab and the bar to eventual leadership and Gaullist ambitions, more honoured in rhetoric than in achievement. The grocer’s ...”

“... technically these are crimes punishable by imprisonment, flogging or worse. When Abdul Aziz became king after conquering the Hejaz in 1926, he allowed Jeddah’s foreign community to import alcohol openly: he was forced to end this concession when the British consul, who used to serve drinks to his Saudi guests, was shot dead by a drunken young prince. Since ...”

“... the wayfaring man ceaseth.’ Rural England left nothing like the same mark on posterity as She or King Solomon’s Mines, but he said it cost him more labour than anything else.This wasn’t the first time that arable farmers had fallen victim to abrupt economic and technological change against which they proved powerless, both individually and ...”

“... with it, as he suggests in the account of a primal scene he gave in an interview with David Sylvester: Childhood’s important to me, and it’s when I first came into contact with art. This happened when I was around four or five. One of the greatest pleasures I remember is looking at a cereal box. It’s a kind of sexual experience at that age ...”

“... this hotchpotch of a party will expire before the next general election. Incidentally, how much David Owen must be regretting that the SDP is still alive. If he had remained in the Labour Party nothing could have prevented his becoming its leader. Perhaps the Executive Committee of the Labour Party could dispatch a telegram saying: ‘Come back, ...”

“... process, the first portrayer of society in terms that Adam Smith might and Karl Marx did approve. David Brown makes the academic case admirably. He begins by modestly disclaiming originality: he is developing insights put forward by others in recent years, and only applying them more carefully to a selection of the major novels. This is a service which it ...”

“... It has long been accepted that neither the Union of Crowns of 1603, which saw the Scottish King James VI move south to London, nor the Treaty of Union of 1707 served to cancel out Scottish distinctiveness. In educational, ecclesiastical, intellectual and legal terms, and not only those, Scotland has always retained significant ...”

“... twenty years after her death, still drew the crowds. Last year Prince Charles came higher than David Gandy and David Beckham in GQ’s rankings for best-dressed Briton. The queen has been a global celebrity longer than anyone anywhere.The contract between the royal family and the nation thus relies on a curious bargain ...”

“... essay in Harper’s magazine the young novelist Jonathan Franzen declares Pynchon a personal hero. David Foster Wallace moves beyond admiration to adulation – if not, to put it more plainly, outright imitation. It is, in fact, a virtuoso performance that has eclipsed its progenitor: Wallace out-Pynchons Pynchon, and his third book, Infinite Jest, may well be ...”