“... relevance.) It is, truly, an amazing story. At the end of the 11th century a European army, which may originally have numbered no more than thirty-five thousand, and which was much reduced by battle, disease and defection, nevertheless contrived to take Jerusalem. Of the various Crusader states that they founded in ‘Outremer’, some lasted nearly two ...”

“... economic department during the upswing, and took no action to avert the crisis before it broke. It may or may not have been his fault. The fact remains that, after two years in the Treasury, the basic assumptions underlying his management of the economy were in ruins. His unnecessary resignation after a trivial breach of ...”

“... with mild grey streets, to the veiled lustre of the Forth and the pale gold lands beyond, may under certain skies be revealed in such kindliness that urbanity puts on a pastoral light and one can almost hear the bleating of sheep, and yet be not moved to cry Absit omen ... But once in alternate years there is a Saturday morning when Edinburgh is ...”

“... at least fifteen years before the Palestinians became a political factor in that country. In May 1955 Sharret confided his feelings in these words: ‘I have been meditating on the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, on the many clashes we have provoked which cost us so much blood, and on the violations of the law by our men ...”

“... than the Americans (not that they would want me to be). However brilliant French historians may indeed have been in the past half-century (or more precisely since the founding of Annales in 1929), they seem to me to be inferior to their North American colleagues in one respect, and that is in the geographical scope of the research which is undertaken in ...”

“... the inference: what it is reasonable to do in the light of one set of beliefs and desires may not be reasonable when further reasons for action are adduced. So we cannot represent the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning, premissed on a particular pair of belief and desire, with an unqualified ‘Doing a is desirable.’ Instead, Davidson ...”

“... hit from him will do more than months of routine pounding from lumbering leader-writers. This may be common knowledge. But is it true? After all, media experts of every hue – and not just those who see the press as the poodle of the powerful – have long been questioning the radical potential of mass culture. Many enjoin scepticism towards all ...”

“... Slateford, a village in Kincardineshire. There he is involved with two women. One is a local girl, May, the mill-owner’s daughter. She is trained in the domestic virtues and will, as she promises, make John a ‘good wife’. The other woman is a cosmopolitan Russian, Elizavyeta. ‘Cultured, widely read in three languages, without religion,’ she has heard ...”

“... Pinter directing Sweet Bird of Youth, and brilliantly – suggests a general awareness that there may currently be a hole where our theatre’s heart should be. That declaration of intent comes, not in one of Williams’s purple prefaces, but as a stage direction in the middle of a speech from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as the passively desperate Brick absorbs a ...”

“... other hand, there is no such clause in his contract, though – which is a different matter – he may be subject to certain codes of behaviour, may have an obligation towards ‘truth’ in some sense or other of that word. Autobiography and biography appear, thus, to be very dissimilar genres; and as a ...”

“... interpretation of Berkeley’s position, because it credits him with a view of perception which may be ours but certainly is not his. His view was one that could hardly have been formulated in this century. He began by arguing that the perceptible qualities which the materialist attributes to physical objects are all in the mind of the perceiver. According ...”

“... a long-hop.’ Denis Compton said: ‘He is a yobbo, who was never as good as he thinks.’ Peter May and his selectors refused even to pick Botham for England after the ban had expired. Was all this really because the game had been ‘brought into disrepute’ through Botham’s article on cannabis? Cannabis is illegal, but it is not dangerous, as far as ...”

“... there are now departments with no very junior people and no professors. The government may have set out to hack the ‘dead wood’ from the university system: what they have done instead is to slice off the living shoots and healthy branches. This was, of course, entirely predictable: established scholars will go where they are most valued and ...”

“... project’ and is not pressed for further details: ‘Project is a self-contained phrase and may or may not be capable of elaboration.’ TM muses: ‘I come across the word in newspapers and among academicians, engineers and adventurers. One might hear the word and keep quiet, no probing further.’ Rann might have ...”

“... sold by the hundreds of thousand: today they seem naive, and sometimes comically romantic, and may well be virtually out of print. Marie Stopes had to face unremitting, often crude attacks. After the war we met regularly to discuss her sales, usually in some dark little-frequented restaurant where her persecutors would not track her down. I was incredulous ...”