“... familiar to students of Plato and of Freud – that the obstacles to your capacity to act freely may be internal rather than external, and that you will need to free yourself from these psychological constraints if you are to behave autonomously. But this, too, fails to capture a separate concept of positive liberty. For while the notion of an internal ...”

“... that are accepted become as influential as truths, ‘it is a myth we ought to examine.’ Myths may become as influential as truths, but that does not make them truths. As always with such narratives of ‘decline’, it is hard to pin down where exactly things went wrong. When was ‘England’ last fully alive, according to Scruton? At times it seems that ...”

“... on the plain wall behind them, which parallels the line of eye contact. Even the unsententious may be inclined to feel that some smart adage about blind youth is neatly embodied here, but Bersani and Dutoit argue that Caravaggio’s paintings provide ‘a visual speculation on the meaning and condition of knowledge’ and that this clever robber is ...”

“... does not love me’ written in pencil, to name just a few of the 576 lots that were auctioned – may represent the most interesting event to occur in contemporary art since the death of Andy Warhol. Indeed it takes Warhol’s deification of celebrity past its absurdly logical conclusion: why pay more for a representation of Marilyn Monroe, even an Abstract ...”

“... of the English writers, and what are the deficiencies of the late attempts, which another editor may hope to supply.’ If even the belligerent Johnson felt he had to justify producing a new complete Shakespeare in 1756 – an edition aiming to supersede only two or three rivals, which by the time of its appearance would be at least twenty years old – how ...”

“... own living; nor could they divorce their husband or limit the number of children they had. Theirs may have been a gilded cage, but they were nevertheless imprisoned and silenced by fear – ‘the fear that forbids freedom in the private house’. They were afraid of the male aggression that surfaced in the angry opposition with which the majority of men met ...”

“... cloud’ that impedes his destiny? – at least it is the mark of something. So this character may be grandiose in his ambition, but also in his fatalism. And isn’t that phrase ‘tiny black cloud’ done with great finesse? It hints at a man whose sense of himself has so swelled that he now sees himself geographically, like a darkened area experiencing ...”

“... to explain, even one as unfailingly shrewd as this. The explanation that comes quickest to mind may well be the right one, however. Malraux’s first wife, Clara, who enjoyed sniping at him after they’d split up, once observed that get him alone and he didn’t seem anything like so sure of himself as he did when he had an audience; thus boosterism ...”

“... Goethe, Stendhal and Tolstoy; but most of these authors were foreigners, and though other nations may speak of a literary science, the English prefer to define the timeless essence of the literary in terms that have been current only for about two hundred years in a smallish corner of the globe. The first theorist of academic English in Britain, Richards saw ...”

“... Tel Aviv liberals who see Jerusalem as a hotbed of fanaticism and outmoded, Levantine customs. He may be an atheist now, but – again unlike most Israeli secularists – he remains comfortable around religious traditions that Israel’s founders viewed as primitive relics. The title of Warschawski’s book refers not only to his own experience of ...”

“... Persons and Parts, without changing their Minds or Affection.’ This contemporary Jesuit critique may have been a counsel of perfection, but Parsons had undoubtedly put his finger on a real weakness in the Marian settlement. Pole himself lamented the necessity of employing the Henrician episcopate and parish clergy to undo the schism they had helped ...”

“... individual human beings.’ McCulloch argues that ‘anxiety about childbirth and mothering may explain Willa’s arguments in the Hogarth essay,’ and mentions a letter from January 1925 in which she describes a recent miscarriage. In August 1924 Edwin had published an article called ‘Women – Free for What?’ in which, channelling Thomas ...”

“... short-circuit of that logic. The rare intrusion of a later text masks an awkwardness, however. God may not be interested in sacrifice, but Genesis is. Every interaction between God and man is marked by the pouring out of blood. Genesis never quite looks this pattern of cutting and sealing in the face, but it sits deep in its cultural assumptions and even in ...”

“... trial, raising the possibility that a majority of those serving on the NPD’s internal committees may have been V-Leute who didn’t know who was and who wasn’t on their side. The BfV was ridiculed for allowing its spies to become indistinguishable from the party they were spying on.In 2012, when Merkel was chancellor, there was another attempt to have the ...”

“... domestic democratic politics. That is the main concern of Robert Crowcroft’s new book, but there may also be broader lessons, of relevance to Britain’s present predicament. A core assumption of those who write about the ‘appeasement’ crisis has always been that it does indeed hold broader lessons. Unfortunately, they disagree profoundly about what ...”