“... various modern scholars and writers, makes an impressive list. The best place to start – as David Stuttard does in his new biography – is family background. For all its democratic politics, Athenian society was intensely class-conscious. Although Alcibiades was a product of that complex network of upper-crust intermarried families which produced most ...”

“... but a Tory government nor by the sound of it ever wants to. At Birmingham I have a session with David Edgar’s playwrights’ class, then do another ‘Our Alan’ performance for a more general audience. 26 January. Run into Tristram Powell. Andrew Devonshire (sic) has done a diary for the Spectator mentioning the memoir of Julian Jebb (edited by ...”

“... all. How far their doctrines are really relevant to Paine is queried in another recent book, by David Wilson, and it may be safer to look to the general tradition of English radicalism and dissent stemming from the 17th century: one writer drawn on by Paine is Milton. Paine had scientific interests, and took great pride in his design for an iron bridge: he ...”

“... writers who have perpetrated the most evil among men.’ If Locke has a competitor in this, it is David Hume, ‘the most culpable of these fatal writers who will not cease to damn the [18th] century in the eyes of posterity, the one who has used the most talent with the most composure to produce the most evil.’ Europe is in chaos because intellectuals like ...”

“... of an intelligence clearly capable of passing the 16th-century equivalent of the eleven plus; and David Starkey’s fluent and vivid account of her early life and apprenticeship. Starkey confesses to having half fallen in love with the young Elizabeth, but to be merely interested in the later Gloriana, ‘her face caked in carmine and white lead ... an ...”

“... adieus his lips are chapped) – given all these givens, one would have thought he had made his peace with his words and famous name leaving a faint trace. Compared to such beating pulsars as Mailer or Bellow, he seemed resigned to the indifferent clockwork of the cosmos (perhaps the best anecdote in Kaplan’s book is when Bellow asks if he can introduce ...”

“... Holocaust since the end of the 1980s (the first intifada), and its return into Hebrew literature (David Grossman’s See under: Love). The Holocaust is part of the victim imagery, hence the madness of state-subsidised school trips to Auschwitz. This has less to do with understanding the past than with reproducing an environment in which we exist in the ...”

“... to write a song with Jackson’s brother Jermaine, ‘a passion-filled song that calls for world peace and global solidarity in the face of wars and disasters’. According to local correspondents, the record already has a title, ‘He Who Makes the Sky Grey’, but no release date is in sight. The king’s son has high hopes for the recording. He recently ...”

“... Jr was a serious student of philosophy and theology, drawing on the writings of Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau to develop a powerful justification for disobedience to unjust laws. At a time when only 2 per cent of the Black population had graduated from college, King exemplified the ‘talented tenth’ to whom W.E.B. Du Bois looked for racial ...”

“... soul?’ But Luísa’s lover tells Rami he admires her for coming to her rival’s house to make peace. ‘I think all women should unite with each other against the tyranny of men. If I were a woman, I’d do that.’ Rami realises she has ‘never lifted so much as a finger’ to turn fate in her direction, and soon she begins. First, she gathers the ...”

“... dream racism away. When Orr wakes up the next day everyone has turned grey. He makes Orr dream of peace on Earth. Orr’s unconscious, like a bad genie in a fairy tale, takes the instruction literally: he dreams that an alien attack on the moon unites the people of Earth against a common enemy. He asks Dr Haber: ‘What kind of monsters have you dredged up ...”

“... instantly hit electricity supplies and drove the Government to send for Lord Wilberforce to make peace for them. Interviewed by the BBC, Frank Chapple was asked whether he wasn’t ashamed of the misery his workers were causing. Not a bit of it, he said: here was a government which had told everyone to stand on their own two feet, and that was what his ...”

“... are accustomed to pass at short notice. It shares a border with Israel, with which it signed a peace treaty that has allowed the Israeli army great room for manoeuvre when it has invaded its neighbours. Egypt has a very close relationship with Washington, particularly when it comes to counter-terrorism, and it has provided services that dare not speak ...”

“... a plus. Lucie has been working as a snooper for two years now: ‘A kid can’t smoke a joint in peace without me personally being right up behind him … The life of their children belongs to adults of my generation, who don’t want to let their youth get away from them twice.’ Her most recent assignment is Valentine Galtan, a girl of ...”

“... a scholarship in classics to Highgate School, published poems in the school magazine and set up a peace society. He developed an interest in science, and after blowing three fingers off one hand while trying to make fireworks for George V’s Silver Jubilee, turned gratefully to the study of molluscs. As a teenager, he was, in his own words, an ...”