“... in 2004), shows the extent of the party’s hold on every aspect of British politics. One mark of a one-party state is that internal party disputes become the primary political battleground. By contrast, Theresa May leads a strikingly united party, at least for now. But her Commons majority is only 12. London has a Labour mayor and an increasingly ...”

“... re-emerge and, after three centuries embedded (or as Balzac puts it, squashed) in the dense urban fabric of the Latin Quarter, find itself an island, only just spared by Baron Haussmann’s interventions to the east and narrowly missed on two sides by the Boulevards Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain. A palimpsest of the history of Paris and of the Roman ...”

“... as a future battleground for the conflict over the meaning of modernity. It is this battle for urban space, in a literal and metaphorical sense, which in many ways defines the Situationist adventure. Sadler devotes a great deal of energy to explaining how the Situationists developed the techniques of ‘psychogeography’ – a variety of ...”

“... found their most exasperating check in Palmerston’s ability to hold in thrall much of the urban opinion which should have formed their natural constituency. ‘Flunkeyism’ and the lack of self-respect which it denoted were Bright and Cobden’s habitual explanation for the unaccountable failure of the middle class to perform the historic role for ...”

“... the land; a post-Independence nationalist model that has failed more or less badly; a dispossessed urban poor with high expectations nourished by education: these factors, which accounted for the rise of the Islamist ideal in Algeria during the 1980s, are at work in almost all of Kepel’s countries, through the Maghreb, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Palestine, to ...”

“... from the streets where fans-turned-players like Martin Peters, the future World Cup winner, and Mark Noble, a future club captain, first learned to pass a ball. In 2006, the team conceded an injury-time equaliser in the cup final, three minutes away from winning West Ham’s first silverware in 26 years. A few months after that, the families who had owned ...”

“... has another huge book out in German later this year, on American industrial modernity. But it does mark the end of his engagement with the Russia he studied and knew. It’s almost 35 years since the USSR entered its terminal crisis. As Schlögel puts it, ‘the quarter of a century that has elapsed since that time has shown how painful this process of ...”

“... is one of the most enthralling of these essays. We have also Durham, the poseur, bent on making a mark in politics but not prepared to work at the task, vulgarly displaying his wealth and less vulgarly expecting others to look after it for him, assertively combining radical dogmas with ancestral conceit. Two quoted comments on him are worth holding ...”

“... where we worship as art one of the dynamics that gives life to the economic system of the West, mark the supreme achievement of capitalism.’ The book makes connections between evidence drawn from a very wide range of modern research. For this reason alone it is of great value, but anyone who is curious to pursue Goldthwaite’s sources will find the ...”

“... Paris for pomp, or for elegance and urbanity. There is nothing which suggests a well-modulated urban existence as surely as the Palais Royal, no frontage as magisterial as Perrault’s to the Louvre. But move out from the centre of Paris and the light dims. The blocks of tenements become repetitious, the streets mean. Perhaps it was this lack of a readable ...”

“... first stop, scores lowest in almost every respect. He figures it as an unreal inferno, a savage urban jungle schizophrenically divided into desperate ‘Street People’ who haunt the subways and sidewalks, pitiful by day and threatening by night, and indifferent ‘Air People’ who only feel safe when cloistered in protective nests in high-rise apartment ...”

“... with great generosity of spirit, is not nearly so harsh as such a character might be. Under its urban realism, The Lost Language of Cranes is a sort of idyll, but it isn’t necessary to like the book less for ...”

“... and the timber-screened Garden Building (1967-70) at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. They were, in Mark Crinson’s description, ‘writerly, artistic-minded, avant-garde and unabashedly intellectual’, known for their many books as much as for their relatively few buildings (a third, posthumously published volume of their collected works, Alison and Peter ...”

“... deer of various kinds, 200 wild swine, 1300 hares and 115 cranes. Basic supplies for the feast to mark the installation of George Neville as Archbishop of York in 1467 began with 104 oxen, 1000 sheep, 10,000 capons and six wild bulls, washed down with a hundred barrels of wine. These occasions were meant to demonstrate munificence such as humbler kitchens ...”

“... He is, of course, an immensely prolific writer, who has published one well-regarded monograph on urban landlords, a sheaf of learned articles on cognate aspects of economic history, and a mixed handful of speculative and wide-ranging essays. But he is not chiefly renowned for his own research: instead his reputation is sustained by his literary talents. This ...”