“... the human mind. Metaphysical principles – such as the notion that all events happen according to laws of nature, or that total quantities of matter are always conserved, or that every event has a cause, or that the natural sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics – were not propositions, but ‘presuppositions’. And all such presuppositions were ...”

“... the idea that Neolithic nomads couldn’t wait to settle down, cultivate grain, obey laws and pay taxes – while David Graeber and David Wengrow, in The Dawn of Everything, recovered evidence that humanity has experimented with forms of collective life beyond the modern ...”

“... the late 1850s, he had moved on from his theatre jobs and was working as a stockbroker with his in-laws; by 1863, his contract with Hetzel allowed him to devote himself full-time to writing. Verne addressed Hetzel as ‘my good, dear director’ and replied to his heavy-handed interventions on his drafts in remarkably upbeat terms: ‘You are perfectly right ...”

“... and cruelty. Sewall’s Mabel is generous, naive and true; her gentle intellectual husband, David Todd, reveres his wife’s lover and is himself so devoted to her that he cannot bear to stand in the way of her happiness with this other man. Gordon sees these three quite differently. Her David is a philanderer who ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... rarely floated nationalist solutions to their problems. The slogan ‘English votes for English laws’ strikes a discordant note in the dominant melody of English history. It’s not that the English have been immune to chauvinism or national mythologising. Since the later Middle Ages at least – and arguably for much longer – they have enjoyed a strong ...”

“... powerful may enjoy privacy is when it is the same kind shared by the ordinary: one enforced by the laws of nature, rather than the policies of man. Greenwald next saw some documents. His heart is always racing, he’s always plunging in, getting excited, and he’s always anxious about things falling apart. (He’s that kind of reporter.) But he knows what ...”

“... wealth on art. There were similar attacks all over Europe, from the British Isles to the Balkans.David Freedberg, who teaches art history at Columbia (and who was, long ago, my dissertation adviser), describes himself as ‘haunted’ by the question of what it is about art that arouses such fierce responses. Most academic art history considers the social ...”

“... out of Ixtepec, a Oaxacan town on the overland migrant route. It looked like a location from a David Lynch movie. The entrance was festooned with orange and black ribbons, pumpkins, plastic gnomes, scarecrows and witch effigies. By the door, a raccoon scrabbled desperately on a metre-long chain. In the reception area a wooden rocking chair and a pair of ...”

“... where he lapsed into a state of knee-knocking shock. Another Englishman, the Lancastrian David Lloyd, was hit a terrifying blow in the groin by Jeff Thomson. The following summer, I too hit him in the same region. I saw him later, ice packs clasped to his nether regions, and asked after his health. ‘After Thommo it were a pleasure,’ he ...”

“... that even his achievement in health could well be swept away. American politics is propelled by laws quite different from any known in Europe. A great deal may be traced back to the elections of the 1960s. Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, in their study Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and US Party Coalitions (1999), found that the old ...”

“... However, everything at Summerhill – where lessons are voluntary and the pupils invent their own laws – is put to a vote, and the children decided they wanted to keep the tepee for themselves. So for the summer of 1993 I lived in a bed and breakfast in Leiston. All the other guests worked for Sizewell B: every piece of crockery and all the towels and ...”

“... is a monument to white supremacy. The book and film offer different variations on the theme: the David O. Selznick production replaced Mitchell’s celebration of the Ku-Klux-Klan with a visually unforgettable paean to ‘the cavalier society’ of antebellum Atlanta, with its ‘knights and ladies, masters and slaves’. Atlanta was actually a frontier ...”

“... to expel him. Morley claims that the case was ‘the start of a considerable liberalisation of the laws governing homosexuality’, having had an influence on the setting up of the Wolfenden Committee. This is surely an exaggeration, giving the case, however important it was to the actor and the theatre generally, greater political significance than it can ...”

“... is up against: ‘Tony Blair was attacked last night for refusing to scrap hated human rights laws. The PM’s buddy Lord Falconer yesterday ruled out any change to the act that frees murderers to kill again.’ These characterisations of the Human Rights Act have not come out of the blue. The worry that the act would produce a deluge of litigation led by ...”