“... chose to file a libel suit against Grunewald. What followed turned into the political trial of David Ben-Gurion and his party, to which Kastner belonged. Grunewald was acquitted. Kastner, the German-born judge wrote, ‘had sold his soul to the devil’. In Zertal’s view this was the beginning of Ben-Gurion’s downfall. Worn out by the scandal, he ...”

“... by their suffering and the concept elaborated by Hegel that their fate was predetermined by the laws of history. He was the author of some of the most beautiful patriotic lyrics in Polish, and yet he could at the same time write of a universal fatherland: No nation redeemed me, nor created me; I remember eternity before this age; The Key of ...”

“... We adopt, he says, a ‘physical stance’ towards the weather: we treat it as obeying the laws of physics. We adopt a ‘design stance’ towards a computer: we treat it as an object designed to fulfill certain functions. These attitudes enable us to predict at least some aspects of the behaviour of the weather and of computers. The same aim of ...”

“... critic, but brought to life by him as skilfully as is the even more unpromising Leviticus by David Damrosch. Damrosch begins: ‘Perhaps the greatest problem facing students of the Bible as literature is the fact that so much of the Bible is not literature at all’ – a thought which will occur to most of the few readers Leviticus possesses, and which ...”

“... differences’ they belong to ‘the same human ground-plan’, ‘are moved by the same human laws’. Evans’s first books were prompted by the urgent need to capture the past of a rural society before it disappeared, for mechanisation, particularly in arable country like East Anglia, was bringing about a greater change in farming practice than the ...”

“... according to which ‘former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians everything at Camp David, but they wanted even more.’ So where did the handful of members of the radical Left go? They voted for the Democratic Front (the Communist Party and others), or for Balad, Dr Azmi Bishara’s Arab nationalist party. Most remained secluded inside the ...”

“... but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines.’ At least until recently nearly all Conservatives were similarly opposed to doctrine and ideology. To choose just two examples, John Buchan, like ...”

“... many also discreetly own private islands. On the West Coast, the yacht-owning Hollywood moguls David Geffen and Steven Spielberg are joined by tech billionaires including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Alphabet’s Sergey Brin and his former colleague Eric Schmidt. Microsoft’s Paul Allen owned one, as does Charles Simonyi. The tech-bros have grown their ...”

“... all others. It was founded in Oxford by Edward Lean, the younger brother of the film director David Lean, and was dedicated to the reading and discussion of creative work in progress. When Lean graduated, Lewis took it over. The group was for men only. (Dorothy L. Sayers, a keen Christian and an admirer of Lewis, was excluded.) At first, meetings were ...”

“... Tynan) to write a musical on nuclear war; the Spectator appointed him film critic, and his friend David Astor got him permanent residence and made him a regular reporter on the Observer. Lessing and Sigal inspired and tormented each other in equal measure. ‘She blames me for forcing her into other men’s arms. (“You made me do it. I’m really a one-man ...”

“... golf balls can fit in a school bus?’ or ‘How much does the Empire State Building weigh?’ David Schwartz​ is a science policy expert with a background in physics. His father was the Nobel-winning physicist Melvin Schwartz, who met Fermi in the 1950s and passed on his admiration of the great man. But beyond the physics, as Schwartz admits at the ...”

“... Boswell on the occasion of needling his famous friend with the news that the atheist philosopher David Hume had died well and without repentance. ‘The horror of death, which I had always observed in Dr Johnson, appeared strong tonight.’ Sherwin Nuland a surgeon from Yale, speaks to the Johnson in each of us, to our hunger for knowledge of our inevitable ...”

“... using phrases like ‘collective Arab narrative’ in their conversations with Said at the UN, and David Gilmour, one of the authors under review, is equally improbably described as being frustrated by the ‘non-narrative character of Lebanon’s problems’. Reports of events since the fall of Beirut are described as ‘pre-narrative or, in a ...”

“... rogue exception’ and his crime ‘an exceptionally unhappy event’ in the paper’s history. David Cameron then satisfied himself that Myler’s predecessor, Andy Coulson (who had resigned following Goodman’s conviction), was fit to manage his relations with the press. The appointment of Coulson, made in May 2007 on the recommendation of the shadow ...”

“... P. to take more than one wife; he took five. He led the Mormon campaign against anti-polygamy laws, was harassed by marshals, and from time to time sent one or two of his wives into cornfields or mountain hideouts to escape arrest. In Arizona the editor of the Apache Chief called him ‘a mass of putrid pus and rotten goose pimples; a skunk, with the face ...”