“... and, according to official figures, killed around 12,000 in combat, though the real figure, in David Anderson’s view, is ‘likely to have been more than 20,000’. In addition, Caroline Elkins claims, up to 100,000 died in the detention camps. It is the scale of the British atrocities in Kenya that is the most startling revelation of these books. We ...”

“... The quirkiest​ of the British Isles is a self-governing jurisdiction between Guernsey and France just over three miles long and less than two miles wide. Sark has its own parliament, its own taxes and its own traffic laws (permitting only tractors, bikes and horse-drawn vehicles). Its central, fertile plateau is protected by cliffs on almost all sides that rise to over three hundred feet ...”

“... evidence to refute Goudsmit’s accusation, confirming the conclusion already reached in David Irving’s The German Atomic Bomb, that the German physicists wanted to build a reactor, but not a bomb. Their secretly recorded comments on Hiroshima have now provided further evidence of their reluctance; Heisenberg apparently regarded it as ...”

“... Attali comes from the old Jewish community in Algeria, most of whose members emigrated to France after Algerian independence. Best known as president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he was also an adviser to François Mitterrand in the 1980s. Two of his previous books have also been unusual in aims and arguments: Bruits ...”

“... a reproductive regime with high levels of fertility and mortality to one with low levels of both. France led the way in fertility decline, with the Total Fertility Rate, or TFR, dropping to three children per woman by 1900; the ‘replacement rate’ notionally required for the population to remain stable is 2.1. Between 1880 and 1930, the TFR dropped below ...”

“... this from first-hand testimony from defectors, including Saddam’s own son-in-law.’ At Camp David on 7 September, Tony Blair said proof of a genuine nuclear threat had come in ‘the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites’. Saddam had killed his ...”

“... a historical phenomenon. He surveys political practice and political thought in Britain, the US, France and Germany since 1800, with authority and perspective. For him, conservatism is about defending core values against the encroach of liberal modernity. He shows that many conservatives have taken ideas more seriously than is generally supposed, and ...”

“... of Fesman, which was a huge success.Senghor took power in 1960 on Senegal’s independence from France. Shortly afterwards, he accused Mamadou Dia, his prime minister and long-time ally, of planning a coup. Dia was dismissed and jailed for twelve years. A year later, in 1963, Senghor announced a new constitution abolishing parliamentary democracy. Union ...”

“... make of his sailors, like the one who leans on a table spread with good things in Elizabeth David’s Book of Mediterranean Food. The housewives doubtless thought they were nice lads; in life and art the physical types which attracted Minton were butch. The boys in Hockney’s Cavafy illustrations would not have stepped so easily or so politely onto Mrs ...”

“... equally illuminating in charting their subjects’ partial successes and partial failures. Thus David Hume attacked the 18th-century myth of an ancient British constitution and warned his readers of the disastrous political consequences of ignoring their history. By reminding them of the recent emergence of constitutional government he wished to point to ...”

“... those who were ‘Wrong but Wromantic’. ‘I’m a Whig or little better,’ says Stevenson’s David Balfour by way of apologetic preamble to his admiring recognition of the un-Whig virtues of the Highland clans. Many must have been tempted to agree with W.B. Yeats’s (or his Sage’s) uncompromising answer to his own ...”

“... of Liberals and Marxists alike, while the New Right delights in a pedigree which reaches back to David Hume and Adam Smith. In the United States scholars have established the influence of Francis Hutcheson, Hume and Smith on the American Revolution and the making of the Constitution. This view has been widely disseminated – to the liberal left by Garry ...”

“... literature.’ Taking an ‘optimistic and Marxist view’, he found contributions from France, Spain, Russia and Poland, and New Writing seemed, in its beginnings, the authentic voice of violence and resistance. The voice was to change and grow considerably more mellow with changing times, with Lehmann, as Wright very aptly says, ‘bringing ...”

“... Mme Simone Veil, the Parliament’s President, smartly declared both budgets approved. Belgium, France and Germany then threatened not to pay; and the Commission started legal proceedings against them. They may end up in the dock at the European Court. Future historians of Europe may see the whole story as a constitutional struggle, like royal feuds with ...”

“... knew she couldn’t help herself, and that hope, not calculation, lay behind each new throw. C. David Heymann did manage to interview his subject, and he draws heavily on her notebooks and on the findings of an army of researchers. Poor Little Rich Girl is dense with facts, figures and, above all, names, and is marred by a clumsily novelettish ...”