“... strictures against blasphemy. The introductory chapter of Blasphemy, by the great American legal scholar Leonard Levy, covers ‘the Jewish trial of Jesus’; it is followed in close succession, in Levy’s account, by the Christian invention of the concept of heresy and the persecution of the Socinian and Arminian heretics and later of the ...”

“... the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, whose funding sources are a jealously guarded secret, Richard Walton, the retired head of counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, accused XR of trying to break up ‘democracy and the British state’. In January, City of London police put XR on a list of groups said to have extremist ideologies; they were ...”

“... the ‘inheritance of power’ that occurred with Bashar al-Assad’s succession in 2000. But Richard Cromwell seriously tried to liberalise the Protectorate; the army felt threatened and deposed him after nine months. Assad fell ill in 1983 and it seemed for a moment that his younger brother, Rifat, would take over, in what would have been an ...”

“... of Erika, whose father is also a version of Thomas Mann. Hendrik’s new father-in-law was ‘a scholar and thinker who was not only one of the most eminent and talked about figures on the European literary scene but also one of the most influential in political circles’. The actor’s father-in-law is referred to throughout as ‘the privy ...”

“... Third Crusade to take back the Holy City, and Tyre became the base of its operations. Its leader, Richard Plantagenet, reoccupied Acre, executing prisoners and slaughtering its inhabitants. Jerusalem, however, could not be retaken. For the next seven hundred years, with the exception of one short-lived and inconsequential Crusader occupation, the city ...”

“... under a thousand apiece from Jean-Yves Tadié and William Carter; Joyce, at 59, eight hundred from Richard Ellmann. Moving down the scale to medium or lightweights, there is little reduction in size. If we confine ourselves to Britain, Martin Stannard produced a thousand pages on Evelyn Waugh, who died when he was 62; Graham Greene, who survived him by a ...”

“... going to be strained too. Even Erik Zürcher, the Dutch historian who has done more than any other scholar to bring to light the linkages between the CUP underground and Kemal after 1918, could only allow himself, in his classic Turkey: A Modern History, the cautious subjective avowal that, while it might be ‘hard, if not impossible’ to prove beyond ...”

“... in the flats above and below don’t even know there’s been a fire. This was something else.’ Richard Welsh is a senior officer with the London Fire Brigade. His pager went off at 1.18 a.m. ‘Initially they had six machines there,’ he said. ‘Then they asked for eight, and then ten, and then 15, 20, and then 25. I’m hearing that on the way there, so ...”