“... was the only minister to oppose it, and did so because of its likely political unpopularity. That may be true, but the political argument for the Poll Tax is the only plausible one. Its aim is, by creating ‘ratepayers’ out of people who had hitherto paid no rates at all, to make the new ratepayers as resentful of local councils as ratepayers are supposed ...”

“... the cause of freedom and equality as they variously saw it. Still looking for patterns, we may notice that Walzer’s typical social critic is, to use an appropriately archaic and sexist term, a man of letters. That is to say, he (or in one case she) makes a living from some combination of journalism, non-fiction and novels that tend to be a ...”

“... coincided with the last great age of letter-writing. Moreover his friends were people who had what may now seem an unusually pressing need to keep in touch with one another, even when not very far apart, and this need was well served by the Post Office, which, before 1914, gave London eight deliveries of mail each day. Woolf himself had a long spell as a ...”

“... they point out how, before coming to Rome, she was more thoroughly of her time than she and others may have realised. Likewise, her affirmation, in Rome, of a radical democratic view of America was streaked with irony and poignancy, for, as she told her friends, she could only find her radical America in Rome. Vance is just as alert to nuance when he treats ...”

“... order. And if the role of the new Kyoto Center is to facilitate such a process, then a bit of salt may be in order. If one reacts too strongly, there is a danger of increasing the self-importance of these individuals and giving them extra exposure as guardians of cultural kudos. So how do we help both the Japanese and ourselves? The first essential is to make ...”

“... In fact, of course, nothing of the sort has been shown; nor will it be. Bald naturalism may, for all philosophers know, be viable after all. That may strike you as comforting if, like me, you find McDowell’s efforts to formulate a pluralistic alternative rather less convincing. I guess I am a hairy ...”

“... says he believes in God, he’s only doing his job. If he says he doesn’t believe in God, he may be onto something. And Cochran brings me to the other great – perhaps the great – bore of the year. Let me defer here to Adolph Reed, who is emerging as one of the few black American essayists worth reading in a period of intensifying racism and of ...”

“... programme that leaves strange bruises around the genitals of middle America, though spooky, may be just about preferable to the very real fight in Ireland over who owns your insides. ‘Get your rosaries off our ovaries’ was the battle cry, but the pro-life louts are still hanging around the Dublin streets, with their short hair and jars full of dead ...”

“... history with a half-baked curriculum of Third World and Afrocentric studies. European history may have brought this fate on itself, but non-European history deserved a great deal better. What is ‘Europe’? What is ‘European Civilisation’? Davies is a sturdy original, and china shops bring out the bull in him as they did in his master, Alan ...”

“... to live, they will have to construct fantasies, lavish internal fictions. At such moments, they may resemble the community they are escaping; they may simply substitute their own singular private fantasy for a shared public one. And they will do this not with desperation but with mild comedy. One of Munro’s narrators ...”

“... Singapore and by the well-organised supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Vietnam War. It may well be that the real heyday of the bicycle will come only when the world’s fossil fuels run down. ‘In Asia alone,’ Dodge writes, ‘bicycles transport more people than do all of the world’s automobiles,’ and China ‘produces more than 40 per cent ...”

“... and petty neuroses of her clan and brood. But does she truly deserve such a dispensation? Monarchs may be able to elude responsibility for many things, but surely the state of the monarchy is not among them. And the Queen made at least two decisions of her own which contributed to the present zoo-like condition of her relatives. The first was her choice of ...”

“... slightly bemused words of the Ministry of Labour, of ‘unrest paralysed by patriotism – or, it may be, of patriotism paralysed by unrest’. There were some bad moments: in the summer of 1918, thanks to a miniature general strike involving even the London Police, the dead lay unburied in England as well as in France. As the war progressed, the ‘Us and ...”

“... data about current or mooted changes, and one can see that from within the charmed circle they may well look like a state of ferment. To the world outside, however, I doubt whether it would make a ha ’p’ orth of real difference if all the current criticisms were accepted and all the reforms implemented. This is not only because what is going on is ...”

“... ignored. Ecological consciousness filters into our thinking only slowly and patchily. Some comfort may be gained from the volume Future Earth. This is one of those superlatively produced and illustrated popular accounts of current science that are food and drink for the enquiring young. A dozen topics are considered here that would never have been included in ...”