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“... such a profusion of data on so many aspects of Mexica history and religion, but leave so many vital strands of evidence in the shadows. For this alone, I am grateful for the opportunity to have read her ...”

“... of human action and imagination to transform the tragic history of mass displacement into a new, vital history of the dwelling place’ (Kwon is an anthropologist who writes for anthropologists). This is what he sees in the Vietnamese readiness to welcome the ghosts of strangers, presupposing the foundational security of hearth and home, whose assumed fixity ...”

“... anti-poetry which almost any literate person could turn out indefinitely. But you communicate no vital experience at all, and express no authentic reaction to your subjects, while your verbalisms are throughout quite appallingly trite and unilluminated by any flash of personal vision or first-hand feeling at all. He was, by this time, well qualified to make ...”

“... to identify with victory. De Gaulle was convinced that this picture of a united nation was a vital prerequisite if France was to take its rightful place among the world powers. This desire for national unity was reflected in his government, which, in order to minimise the chance of disruption by the PCF, included four Communist ministers. But de Gaulle ...”

“... One of the principal problems of the warring generals was an inability to agree on strategy. At David Owen’s insistence, the Alliance’s election objectives were limited to achieving the balance of power. This had the apparent advantage of modest realism, but there were more substantial disadvantages. The first of these – as I can report by taking a ...”

“... with storytelling (it is the subject of Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing and the form of David Hare’s Via Dolorosa), as Post-Modernist attempts to deny the validity of narrative give way to a more subtle (and sensible) exploration of how narrative works. The influence that speaks most strongly to today’s Irish dramatists is not that of the turn ...”

“... significant industrial and technological advantages over Europe in the manufacture of commodities vital to the development of the global economy, such as tea, silk, porcelain and printed calicoes. After the European economies took off decisively in the 19th century, it became plausible for the first time to propagate the myth of China’s epochal ...”

“... life. None of the judges seems to have been able fully to grasp the force of an argument made by David Harris QC on behalf of Rosie: ‘John Locke’s assertion that "every man has a property in his own person. This no body has any right to but himself” . . . is difficult to apply in the case of conjoined twins.’ I have looked again at the photograph on ...”

“... whom this vast infrastructure has (at least ostensibly) been erected. It is a historiography, as David Ingleby wittily put it, ‘like the histories of colonial wars’: it tells ‘us more about the relations between the imperial powers than about the “third world” of the mental patients themselves’. For this reason, among many others, Elaine ...”

“... best to stay in. What, though, if you were some out-of-order soul who chose to look at this vital encounter from the other end of the pitch? One early cricketer who did so was the third Duke of Dorset: ‘What is human life but a game of cricket? – beauty the bat and man the ball,’ he’s quoted as saying in ...”

“... the Basque country and Galicia, and then other regions. Cataluña put itself forward as the one ‘vital member’ which might revive the nation. Further troubles caused by military setbacks in Morocco led to syndicalisation even in the Army. Bloodshed broke out with fighting in Barcelona between anarcho-syndicalists and unions sponsored by employers, as a ...”

“... their angles and their guests, so by the time it came to us, the story would be old, but still vital. The audience would want more of it, but not more of the same. We checked with each other what we had seen and how far into the night we had each stayed watching. Three o’clock, five o’clock. No one else saw the reporter in Saudi cut off suddenly, as ...”

“... whole seem to care, what is being kept from us. That is rather special; and a major factor, claims David Vincent in this path-breaking book, in our governance. It can have ludicrous effects. One was the refusal to acknowledge that we had any ‘secret services’: until recently, MI5 and MI6 had no official existence. Questions about them in Parliament were ...”

“... to play the role of modern political leader. Would he – could he? – perform the countless vital tasks that come naturally to David Cameron or Tony Blair: everything from how to comport yourself at the despatch box to the best way to climb out of a chauffeur-driven car, from how to use an autocue to knowing which pop ...”

“... of their own.* Like, I suppose, doctors and psychiatrists, when they talk to each other, their vital interest is in using their skills to make a living. Steven Zdatny offers the articles of Emile Long as a particular view of the social history of the early years of the 20th century, and it is a very particular view indeed. The years from 1910 to 1920 were ...”