“... golfer called Stuart Ransom, but Barker’s own experience was more closely foreshadowed by a passage involving another character, Jen, who is asked by Gene, her colleague at the Thistle Hotel in Luton, about the role of ‘philosophy’ or ‘structure’ in her existence. She replies that for her there’s only ‘stuff’: ‘Here’s some ...”

“... there is Laudianism, the new-fangled High Churchmanship which was awarded political ascendancy by Charles I. Then, opposed to it, there is the old-fashioned Calvinism of that doyen of Puritan scholars, the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher. Although the first system was less dogmatic than the second, both of them closed their adherents’ minds. Between them ...”

“... to teach’. If one troubles to look up this letter, it comes as a surprise to discover that the passage specifically concerns Raphael’s architectural and archaeological activities, and his discussions on these subjects with Fabio Calvo, the translator of Vitruvius. An equally striking example of historical wishful thinking comes in the concluding chapter ...”

“... by the use of newly developed firearms; Rome was sacked by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, in 1527.Many of the Jews who lived around the Mediterranean were on the move, and not by choice. Those who hadn’t converted to Christianity were expelled from the domains of the Spanish crown in 1492, and from the kingdom of Portugal in 1497. The ...”

“... see in our own, to explain the human condition as an inevitable consequence of our biology. Even Charles Darwin was at fault. Hidden in his unpublished notebooks is the damning passage: ‘Origin of Man now proved – metaphysics must flourish – he who understands baboons will do more towards metaphysics than ...”

“... major cultural event,’ as the Introduction rightly observes. Some of the best excerpts are from Charles Péguy: from the Vers libre of Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc and from his attack on the ‘socialist art’ advocated by Jaurès. Modernism, well under way before it, as is testified not only in the work of such big names as Trakl and ...”

“... about Cameron of Lochiel, whose decision, against his better judgment, to come out for Prince Charles Edward Stuart in 1745 won the clans for the Pretender and doomed the ancient culture of the Highlands to extinction. ‘That gentleman, whose rent never exceeded five hundred pounds a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred of his own people into the ...”

“... makes it difficult to chase away such thoughts and look for a book, to find again, perhaps, that passage in Thoreau where he speaks of the grand old poem called winter, coming around each year without any connivance of ours, or that other one where he pleads to heaven that there be birds on days like this with rich, colourful plumage, recalling the ease and ...”

“... of burlesque version of themselves. These are men like the braggadocio Peter Shakerly; the railer Charles Chester, who was the model for Carlo Buffone in Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour; Humfrey King, the poetic tobacconist; the barber-surgeons Tom Tooley and Richard Lichfield; the tavern joker John Stone. These loquacious oddballs found a small ...”

“... was replaced by the Irish Free State, but Northern Ireland is with us still.In The Partition, Charles Townshend aims to explain how Ulster came to be conceived of as an entity requiring special treatment, even if people couldn’t agree on what, if anything, should be done about it, or on what exactly Ulster was. Townshend’s main focus is on British ...”

“... case. Foote’s theatrical career began under the tutelage of the veteran Irish actor and director Charles Macklin. Somewhat improbably, his first outing, in early 1744, was in the role of Othello. This was received well enough but his more notable success, first in London and then in Dublin, was as Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse. Other repertory ...”

“... of larger sheets now in the Codex Atlanticus. It was at some point acquired by that avid collector Charles I, though no documentation of this survives. It surfaced in Kensington Palace in the mid 18th century: according to a contemporary account, ‘this great curiosity’ had been deposited in a ‘large and strong chest’ during the Civil War, and there lay ...”

“... and an anti-semitic Christian. ‘I am imbued with anti-semitic feelings,’ he wrote in a diary passage quoted by Segev. A few years later, Weizmann asked Churchill to remove Congreve as well. Churchill complied. Zionist influence in London annoyed British High Commissioners and senior officers alike: they knew that Weizmann had better access to prime ...”

“... apples brought here by a traveller Five years ago, and have discussed them since. This opening passage shows some of the volume’s strengths, and a weakness. It is vividly observant, rich with a sense of place, but the note of dignified and loving meditation is corrupted a little by patronising folksiness, as in those last few lines, or a similar ...”

“... Charles Ray’s​ life-sized Young Man, machine-milled in 2012 from a solid stainless-steel block, is meant, Ray says, ‘to move forwards and backwards in increasingly irrelevant time’. The phrase is less opaque than it seems. His ambition was to make a kouros, but one modelled on the body of a long-time Los Angeles friend ...”