“... as the debating triumph it would have achieved would have come at too high a political price. John Major’s government survived its Commons ordeal on Scott because of the decision to abstain by the three members of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. One of the three, the Reverend William McCrea, was reported as having asked, shortly before the ...”

“... Thomas’s death the family fractured. Frances ran away, abandoning the children to her parents, John and Alice Jennings. When she reappeared two months later it was to take over the lease on the Moorfields stables and transfer it to her new young husband, William Rawlings. Her parents watched as she drove their once prosperous business into the ...”

“... research was done in order to establish this principle. Despite the introduction of Jim Crow laws in the South, there were no uniform criteria for what constituted a ‘negro’, or the more general category, a ‘coloured person’. Before emancipation in the Southern states, ‘negro’ had the fixed meaning ‘enslavable’, as opposed to Native ...”

“... in the 1720s, Robert Walpole gave posts to six members of his family (brothers, sons and in-laws), as well as to other long-time supporters, prompting the charge that Britain was governed by a ‘Robinocracy’. As late as 1831, Earl Grey was accused of securing offices for his family retinue worth £60,000 a year, even as his government introduced ...”

“... in 49 states drafted more than 440 restrictive voting bills, while 19 states enacted 34 laws that made voting more difficult, for instance by introducing requirements for proof of citizenship or repealing the provision of postal votes. The Spirit Lake Nation (Mni Wakan Oyate) and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa recently filed a federal lawsuit ...”

“... implications of Blake’s debt to Macpherson’s Ossian. Of Williams’s first trio of writers, John Barrell, on the period 1730-1780, applies theory to practice most fully and intelligently. Barrell’s ‘Equal, Wide Survey’ deals with topics associated with Williams – pastoral poetry and language – but handles them in an unabashed scholarly ...”

“... given that its own life began effectively with a commercial problem. In 1777 the Scottish printer John Bell was flooding the London market with cheap editions of English poets, in defiance of the copyright interests of English publishers. A consortium of London stationers decided to blow Bell out of the water with a set of editions of significant English ...”

“... better at most interesting worldly things. Even so, there would be no good reason for setting up laws or regulations to exclude women from any lines of endeavour. Nobody doubts that even less talented men should have the chance to seek forms of education, work or political participation: hence even if all women were among the less talented, this could not ...”

“... un détour’, while a three-star is ‘une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage’. But both laws and attitudes have changed with respect to ‘driving under the influence’, cheap airfares have attracted well-heeled French people to more distant holiday destinations, and 9/11 and two stock-market crashes since the beginning of the century have affected ...”

“... was a tough-minded drive to find mechanical explanations. When England’s greatest living poet, John Milton, wanted to explain why we are as we are, he retold the ancient story of Adam’s sin and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. When Alexander Pope wrote his Essay on Man in the following century he took care to parallel his work with ...”

“... national issues, as the pro-gun and pro-life candidate. Mayors have no say on abortion or on gun laws, but Palin got the support of the local Evangelicals (it greatly helped that her – Lutheran – opponent’s surname was Stein and her backers put it about that he was a Jew) and of gun-owners who keenly supported a bill, then pending in the state ...”

“... the man whom he succeeds’. His decision to travel to Dublin shortly after his election to meet John Bruton reinforced the view that he was a Unionist of the new school. He has ‘briskly proved himself a true moderniser’, a Guardian leader concluded warmly. ‘The Molyneaux culture will seem extraordinarily remote and anachronistic.’ Word was ...”

“... to study if they didn’t want to. There were no marks or prizes, and no punishments were imposed. John Betjeman described it as ‘a co-educational school to which modern authors and intellectuals send their sons’. Freud had no interest in academic subjects. Instead, he was fascinated by horses, and remained fascinated all of his life. One of his school ...”

“... without him. And surely, this is something; surely this is enough.’ The statement is quoted by John Morrill in his introduction to the volume of essays he has edited, Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, a book, as he says, about ‘another man who rose from humble East Anglian roots to dominate his world’. Whether a substantial professional ...”

“... it takes up themes from Derrida’s previous writing, notably from Limited Inc, his exchange with John Searle on the topic (supposedly) of speech-act philosophy; and that Signsponge is perhaps his most extravagant text to date, judged by all the normal, reputable standards of literary-critical practice. But having said all this one has really done no more ...”