“... Are counter-factuals, then, a seductive but hopeless strategy for the historical imagination? David Lewis argued in Counterfactuals (1973) that warranted counter-factuals not only had to obey causal logic, they had to imply a real alternative world, of which it seemed there must be an infinite number. Hawthorn along with earlier critics rejects this ...”

“... piece of erotica) and of worldly and cynical epigrammatic reflection. ‘Love does not obey the laws of amiability,’ we are told, and ‘love is the least sociable of the sentiments’ (because ‘not even the beloved is interested in it’). These philosophic pronouncements on the solipisism of love are enforced by a good deal of solitary self-amusement ...”

“... man who got to the top by accident and stayed there because the Labour Party was governed by the laws of inertia. The Labour Party, it was said, would have put up with a chimpanzee as leader, provided he accepted the decisions of the National Executive. Once he was dead, in 1967, Attlee began to be missed and appreciated. As the Labour Party ran slowly ...”

“... good Heaven, from living in tangled forests, and amongst men who are unchecked by those guardian laws, which bind the various orders of society in one common interest ... may the people, amongst whom I live, be withheld by stronger repellants than their own virtue, from invading my property and shedding my blood!!’ Knight was by temperament a stirrer, who ...”

“... is Frank McGregor, whose unpublished thesis on the Rangers (Oxford, 1968) has been pillaged by David wholesale, yet who gave to him the most interesting part of his case. For McGregor, in several articles, has himself developed the argument that George Fox and others used the odium of Ranterism as a useful disciplinary control, and, in the case of early ...”

“... how rules on uncleanness help define a people and keep it together – and apart (Jewish dietary laws being an outstanding success story). These themes recur in Implicit Meanings, even down to the English Sunday midday meal that she calls lunch but a majority calls dinner, a distinction which with its different menus itself helps unite and separate. Then ...”

“... is a science; as such, it has no opinion about religion, for sciences are based on natural laws.’ Throughout the United States, people formed Dianetics clubs and helped each other to become ‘clear’: in this state, they would be free of all compulsions, neuroses and delusions, see colours vividly for the first time, appreciate melody, perform ...”

“... is that Britain’s judges have been doing that they ought not to have been. He cites Lord Justice Laws’s distinction of principle between ‘macro-policy’, which with rare exceptions is a matter for ministers and not for the courts, and policy as it affects individuals, which is the stuff of judicial review. But the principle, while ‘never overtly ...”

“... more mysterious. They have been the subject of two previous books, by Mollie Gillen (1972) and David Hanrahan (2008), both called The Assassination of the Prime Minister. Linklater doesn’t add much information or evidence about the event itself, but he puts it in context, and provides fascinating if overblown speculations about the supposed ...”

“... sick and tired of? How do you remain the party of business and a party of the majority when, as David Rockefeller complained, ‘people are blaming business and the enterprise system for all the problems of our society’? How to finesse the passage of regulatory legislation in the areas of occupational health and safety, the environment and consumer ...”

“... birth mother or Munro’s real mother, a teacher who put on airs that alienated both her in-laws and her own family; Rose becomes, in the end, an actress on stage and television, not a distinguished author. But questions of autobiographical lifting are beside the point; Munro’s always been upfront about using ‘bits and pieces’ from real life, and ...”

“... just like Dr Richard Kimble, the honourable, though much more reluctantly engaged fugitive. David Janssen The series ran to 120 episodes, and was on US television from 1963 to 1967. The finale had the highest ratings of any TV show until the answer to the question of who shot JR was revealed (can anyone now remember?). In 1993 The Fugitive was made ...”

“... or that its history mirrors that of Jewish migrations, is a trope of modern antisemitism. As David Nirenberg put it in Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013), the association of Judaism with worldliness and money is ‘as ancient as Christianity itself’. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the period covered by Bethencourt, European long-distance ...”

“... is nothing equivalent to public school for boys – these fine traditions – unwritten laws that turn out so many splendid characters have been withheld from them – to their detriment.’ The most splendid character of all, in her eyes, was Roland Leighton, who had carried off the school’s seven chief prizes (‘most glorious books in the ...”

“... are allowed to go to Lebanese universities, but these are expensive, and Lebanon’s draconian laws against Palestinians taking good jobs prevent them making enough money to afford to go to one. As so often before, I am struck in Beirut and Jerusalem by the gulf between the high ability of British diplomats and the fumbling policies they are compelled to ...”