“... history in a nutshell.’ And indeed it is. But whose history? Exemplary as this Irish martyr may be, the priest is unable to identify him because he does not feature in the standard martyrology of Irish nationalism. He is, of course, Oscar Wilde. By the time this satirical scene occurs, two-thirds of the way through At ...”

“... The American philosopher John Dewey thought that democracy should be like a giant conversation: the nation talking to itself about its hopes and fears and listening to what other people have to say. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for Dewey, he never got to hear what such a conversation might sound like, because the technology wasn’t available ...”

“... a sturdy quartet of well-carpentered plays that caught the spirit of mid-century America, followed by a long, increasingly unfocused, foggy tail. Rejected in his own country, the one-time toast of Broadway has finally to rely for validation on the subsidised theatre in England. Although he doesn’t entirely agree with this model, Martin Gottfried is a New ...”

“... Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos have given rise to interpretative bad faith on a scale unusual even by the lofty standards of literary criticism. The reason for this is not some special failing on the part of Pound’s adherents, but rather the burden of expectation laid from the outset on a sequence of 11 poems written in the US Army’s Disciplinary Training ...”

“... in Israel-Palestine’. Zion began life as a hill in Jerusalem, as a place already overdetermined by the pressure of a present and future politics, a place to which to return, or to establish authentically for the first time. According to Rose, the history of this figment has never been simple or settled but has always been riven ...”

“... pound. His sense of social detail is acute, as he reports Alec Douglas-Home’s doomed attempts to be trendy (he announced in a 1964 election speech that his party ‘is delivering the goods and it goes places and it will never, I promise you, get stuck in the mud’) and reveals that Edward Heath was probably the first leader of his party to have fitted ...”

“... on its merits, and exercise some discretion if necessary? General rules, we think, are likely to be discriminatory, because they cannot take account of special circumstances. Individuals, by contrast, can use their own judgment, and make exceptions. However, as Frederick Schauer argues in his excellent book, though we are ...”

“... that achieved the sort of notoriety among the tribe of philosophers that Wittgenstein later earned by lifting a poker in the direction (perhaps) of Popper at a meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science Club. There was no poker on hand in Davos, although most then and since seem to think that Cassirer was at the wrong end of the philosophical stick. Despite all ...”

“... one of his most famous essays tells its own story. Without the experiences enjoyed or endured by Eric Blair, Etonian, colonial enforcer, schoolteacher, down-and-out, grocer, infantryman, there would have been no George Orwell, writer. But much of what we know about Blair, we know from Orwell. And it’s not just a matter of what he did when and ...”

“... onlookers? If we insist that these disasters happened to humans, because of humans, can humanism be persevered with? Or is a faith in humanism now wishful thinking? Perhaps our best chance of advancing through the minefield is to be a fool, to kid ourselves, and try to think of courage.The Vietnam War, a film made ...”

“... of rousing huzzahs and declarations of eternal brotherhood. The rapturous welcome received by the mutineers confirms that already, in June 1905, momentum was starting to build towards the triumph of October 1917. But where did the Potemkin go? To the neutral Romanian port of Constanza. There, after several futile attempts to refuel and resupply the ...”

“... the delight and the horror in what is sometimes called a profession or an art, as if its risks can be controlled. An actor can be anyone, if he can stand the pace of change and its rootlessness. Cinema as a medium urges us to view ourselves as actors presenting ourselves. So Marlon Brando could ...”

“... as part of the opposition to a right-wing, anti-communist government. Orbán, who was chosen to be the leader of the parliamentary group, was an effective manager and strategist, though Szelényi felt his ‘restlessness and impatience were a bit much’ (as were his ‘constant football metaphors’). He was also touchy: when she and two other Fidesz ...”

“... forbidding basalt walls. These dramatic fortifications – built following the town’s capture by the great Saljuq Malik Shah in 1088 – remain uncluttered and defiant on the southern side: their dark ramparts can be seen from miles away. I remember driving to Diyarbakir as a student in 1967, when the walls were still ...”

“... force it told the incident-packed story of an inspired and inspiring career cut off at 44 by a self-destructive death. It showed what confusion there was in the early development of a young artist of limited talent and uncertain direction. It demonstrated how he found within himself an intuition of the course he had to take, an uncharted course for ...”