“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... On​ 18 June, the sixth day of Israel’s attack on Iran, David Petraeus gave some unsolicited advice to Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times. Trump, he said, should deliver an ultimatum to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordering him to dismantle Iran’s uranium enrichment programme or face ‘the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your people ...”

“... in a delicate copperplate hand, ‘The daughter of Admiral Walker’, followed by a signature: ‘David Wilkie f-t 1840’. Near her there used to hang another portrait, of a fantastical fellow in a high tarbush with a long, dangling plume, his chest puffed out in his dress uniform, with prominent epaulettes, medals at his throat and a long scimitar cradled ...”

“... She exploited Austin’s role as the treasurer of Amherst College to wangle her own husband, David, into powerful university positions and forced him to build her a Queen Anne-style house just across from his family home. After his death she conned his surviving sister, Lavinia, into deeding her some land. But, perhaps most damning of all, Emily ...”