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“... as Locke and Rousseau. They had in common a commitment to Newtonian science, and a belief that its laws of nature could be extended to society and to government so that both might become law-abiding and knowable. Cassirer’s view of the Enlightenment dominated historical writing as late as the 1960s, and is best represented by Peter Gay’s two magisterial ...”

“... Montagu; and ‘The Motto on Pug’s Collar’, ‘On Sir Isaac Newton’ (‘O’er nature’s laws, God cast the veil of night,/Out blaz’d a Newton’s soul – and all was light’) and even ‘To Mr Pope’ (‘The glow-worm scribblers of a feeble age,/Pale twinklers of an hour, provoke my rage’) for Pope himself. Gerrard follows Howard Weinbrot and ...”

“... travels in America in 1831, the other a picaresque romance about an Englishman called John Larrit (known as Parrot for his talent as a mimic) who is suddenly and brutally torn from an idyllic childhood as the son of an itinerant printer in late 18th-century Devon and transported to Australia, where he grows up to become a topographical artist and ...”

“... The engraved frontispiece​ to the 1635 second edition of John Donne’s Poems features a portrait of the artist as an exceedingly young man. Eighteen years old, in loose curls, padded Italian doublet, a single cross-shaped earring and the optimistic hint of a moustache, Donne clutches an oversized sword by the hilt and gazes sidelong at the viewer from beneath provocatively arched brows, a study in adolescent bravado ...”

“... a public and sometimes legislative reaction. Wu’s first example is the draconian anti-poster laws introduced in early 20th-century Paris (and still in force – one reason the city is by contemporary standards undisfigured by ads). As Wu says, ‘when the commodity in question is access to people’s minds, the perpetual quest for growth ensures that ...”

“... in the South-West don’t like what they’re seeing and in Arizona they have drafted state laws on illegal immigration that vex the federal courts and alienate the business community. Most worrying, they raise local tension between Hispanics and whites. Over the last ten years, beefed-up border control has led to many more deaths among ...”

“... the Latin cultural toleration of prostitutes, thorough police and political corruption, weak laws and new shipping routes.’ East European Jews never monopolised transnational prostitution systems – far from it. But enough of them were in the right place at the right time for an explanation to be worth seeking. The first man through the revolving door ...”

“... fragment’, as another character observes) is this rich and dense account of a life rendered. As John Bainbridge sifts through his rag-bag of memories, we close in on the events and people and things that have nearly touched him nearly: the death of a young subaltern in the war, an adulterous affair with his sister-in-law and with many others, a painting, an ...”

“... put it: ‘We’ve given all you people need to know.’ Even Republicans don’t like Mitt. (John McCain thought the inimitable Sarah Palin a better choice as his running mate.) At the convention, it was astonishing how many speakers barely mentioned the presidential candidate at all. In the end, there was almost nothing for a good Republican to say. His ...”

“... easy way to complete the forms. The same applies to statistics from Egyptian asylums supplied by John Warnock, the head of the Lunacy Department there from 1895 to 1923. Warnock admitted to a ‘total ignorance of Arabic’, which must have made sensitive diagnosis difficult. He also diagnosed Egyptian nationalism as ‘an infectious mental disorder’ and ...”

“... who did not want any more children, but these were entirely private and so have gone unrecorded. John Christopoulos has meticulously pieced together a secret history not only from prescriptive sources but from the public records of trials, giving us for the first time a sense of the way early modern women and men experienced abortion. Trials inevitably ...”

“... traitor. When he questioned the jurisdiction of the specially assembled high court, its president, John Bradshawe, replied: ‘There is a contract and bargain made between the king and his people … The one tie, the one bond, is the bond of protection that is due from the sovereign. The other is the bond of subjection that is due from the subject. Sir, if ...”

“... good character, outside the confines of a job interview or a first meeting with prospective in-laws? Humblebragging in itself is, I suppose, innocuous, but much less so the sustained and coercive judgmentalism of social media.The work of the early 18th-century paradox-monger Bernard Mandeville supplies a devastating corrective to the fashion for unctuous ...”

“... Laura Gottschalk in the American magazine Fugitive. Graves had entered into correspondence with John Crowe Ransom, a Fugitive contributor, some years previously, and he wrote at once expressing his admiration. Ransom cautioned Graves in his reply that Laura Riding – she had in the interim cut loose from her first husband – was ‘very fine ...”

“... determined social reality which constrains the poet who writes from inside the Eastern bloc. The laws of the state are like the rules which govern a tragic masterpiece – only naive optimists believe they can be changed to allow for a happy ending. But the irony is that in suggesting this Holub’s fatalism takes on a political edge and relevance. By ...”