“... less blatantly bogus accounts. As Eghigian points out, aliens – whether or not they come in peace – are always ‘identified with superior knowledge evident in their technological achievements and mastery of languages’. Again and again, they’re reported as saying that humanity’s rampant warmongering and use of nuclear weaponry is what has drawn ...”

“... Hours after the bill was introduced, Im Tirtzu released a list of supposed ‘moles’, including David Grossman, Amos Oz and other members of the liberal Zionist establishment. This was too much even for Bennett, who described the list as ‘embarrassing’. But Regev is thought to be more in tune with the attacks against the old Ashkenazi elite. On the ...”

“... the northern isles? Indeed, Stewart reminds us that as late as the 12th century the Scottish king David I described himself as the ruler of a mixed people, not only Gaelic Scots, but Northumbrians, Flemings and Cumbric Britons. Multi-ethnic kingdoms, significantly, preceded nations. By the early 14th century these various ethnic groups were described as a ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”

“... the best part of a locked-down month to get through Symbolic Forms – it is longer than War and Peace – and while I was constantly impressed by Cassirer’s scope, lucidity and command of detail, I felt starved of brilliance, insight and rigour. It was disappointing to find that Cassirer makes no attempt to explain why his three grand categories ...”

“... more rigorous and living languages’. In his last chapter, a fascinating discussion of the art of David Walliker, he makes it plain that meaningful law is impossible because under contemporary conditions of ‘ultra-modernity’ the authority required by such a law cannot exist. Instead we have only ‘the social forms of human absence’ arranged within ...”

“... to soften the language laws, but has left them essentially unchanged in the interest of ‘social peace’ – fear of nationalist wrath if, for example, commercial signs in English were to be allowed. In recent years the percentage of Francophones in Québec has held firm and even crept up a bit, to 83 per cent. But this stabilisation is not the result of ...”

“... Somalis. I don’t hear my first bullet in Mogadishu until late afternoon. I’m standing with David Shearer, field director of the Save the Children Fund, on the flat roof of the SCF staff house, hardly troubled by the thought that we’re both crisply silhouetted against the skyline. At the report, I flinch – no, I jump. I look at Shearer and see that ...”

“... study of John Everard; and there is some predictably tough and valuable political analysis from David Underdown and Nicholas Rogers. What emerges from most of these essays, however, is not so much the undoubted ideological confluence of English and American radicals, as the disparities between their respective national experiences in the past and their ...”

“... millennials are indifferent to politics. They grew up in the post-1989 world when China was at peace and enjoying double-digit economic growth. In China’s Millennials: The Want Generation (2015) Eric Fish asks: ‘Could the country’s youth ever spark mass Tiananmen-like demonstrations again? Could their growing list of struggles ever cause them ...”

“... is functional, unadorned, and the tone rather desultory, as Oë picks up squabbles around the peace movement, reconstructs medical cases, celebrates doctors and campaigning journalists. The great virtue of the book is its insistence on the way the meanings of the atom bomb have been hijacked, so that it has come to stand for national strength and ...”

“... Americans seem to relish Presidential biographies. David McCullough’s Truman (1992) was on the bestseller lists for the better part of a year, and his John Adams (2001) is providing an astonishing repeat performance. Robert Caro’s dramatically detailed look at The Years of Lyndon Johnson has been unfolding since 1982, and large chunks of Volume Three have been serialised in the New Yorker ...”

“... the trade crisis occasioned by this terrible war’. He writes in 1915: In times of peace the weather generally forms the topic of conversation, but at the present time it is out of place to indulge in such small talk, and opinions are generally exchanged in regard to the latest news from the Front. This gives the coiffeur an excellent chance of ...”

“... opinions married to a successful businessman. (Florence’s mother has been a friend of Elizabeth David and is a friend of Iris Murdoch.) Both stories are set at a very precise date, with debates about socialism, Britain’s decline as a world power, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Both works exude a sense, alive in McEwan’s work since The Child ...”

“... and any number of ministers and favourites. In Mary Rose, his book about Brandon’s third wife, David Loades says: ‘He was present everywhere, but it is hard to pinpoint what he actually did.’ Throughout his career Charles accumulated grand-sounding titles, which confused outsiders into overestimating his importance as a policymaker. When he became ...”