“... there would be inflation. One must wait for economies to right themselves. (‘Is it your view,’ Richard Kahn asked Hayek when he came to Cambridge to explain his theory in 1931, ‘that if I went out tomorrow and bought a new overcoat, that would increase unemployment?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply. Keynes, although he greatly disliked Hayek’s argument, saw ...”

“... by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.’ But whereas Kant views this fate as leading to illusion, antinomy and paralogism, Cavell sees it also as a source of something positive, a virtue of philosophical thought, even if it can degenerate into a vice. His ...”

“... of the word ‘Erastian’ to portray a clerical estate beaten into submission by the secular powers. The early Elizabethan bishops, far from meekly accepting an unlimited royal supremacy, saw themselves as the heirs of St Ambrose, who by rebuking and humbling emperors had made them willing instrumemts of God’s will. Returning from the exile they had ...”

“... well as the real sense of the celebrations was that he was still at the height of his prodigious powers. So it was very much as a public figure that Bloch addressed a distinguished audience at the Humboldt University in East Berlin in November 1956, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the death of Hegel. In tones that would have rejoiced the heart of ...”

“... our mental health at the thickets of TLAs – three-letter acronyms, in the coinage of the writer Richard Hamblyn – that accumulate like dental plaque. Such acronyms now pepper every document circulating in every institution, not just universities. Like the necromantic mirror of the Snow Queen, they swallow everything up and deaden it. The code conceals ...”

“... In fact, some of the best-known roles for castrati were the alpha males Alexander the Great, Richard I, Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar. Boys were castrated to make them better and stronger singers, not to make them girls. On the other hand, while living in the house of a Russian prince the castrato Balatri ‘gained unheard of access to the sexually ...”

“... the fascinating account of the colonisation of Barbados published in 1657 by the English agent Richard Ligon. Many planters remained nervous about bringing religion to their slaves in the 18th century. Even as some argued that Africans were naturally inferior to whites, planters feared they would lose their powers to ...”

“... But when applied to the current terrorist threat, this impetuous desire ‘to end evil’, as Richard Perle defines the neo-con project, has deeply pathological consequences. The danger posed by radical Islamic anti-Western terrorists armed with weapons of unimaginable destructiveness cannot be dismantled overnight. The conditions that make Islamic ...”

“... else could the art historian E.H. Gombrich be transformed by a feat of necromancy into his son Richard, and suddenly appear as ‘a distinguished Orientalist’? What other magical city could induct a wizard of Johnson’s calibre and pack him off to France to discover Jean-Marie Le Pen’s followers celebrating their Welsh origins (‘nos ancêtres les ...”

“... admitting ‘apparent bias’ in overruling planning inspectors and the local council to approve Richard Desmond’s Westferry Printworks development – 24 hours before the introduction of hefty new levies that would have cost the Conservative donor an estimated £45 million. A few weeks earlier, Desmond, the former owner of the Express newspapers, had ...”

“... of the poetry have followed this tendency: it is not rare now for critics like, for instance, Richard Holmes in his agreeable volumes of biography, to find Coleridge’s crown as a poet among the ‘Conversation Poems’ – quietly meditative post-Cowper colloquial writing such as ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’, and ‘Frost at ...”

“... has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents. That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of ...”

“... partners that the United States would defend its interests without consultation with the European powers; and he forced the Macmillan Government to become more dependent on the United States by cancelling the Skybolt missile and obliging them to accept the offer of Polaris missiles. The natural result in January 1963 was General de Gaulle’s demolition of ...”

“... evidence linking him to war crimes. Despite the advanced state of the German prosecution, Richard Goldstone, who had recently been given leave from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to head the Prosecutor’s office in The Hague, was determined that the Tribunal should not let the only current case of an alleged war criminal pass ...”

“... Palgrave in Suffolk. She was a celebrity – Wedgwood produced a cameo of her, and she appeared in Richard Samuel’s painting The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain at the Royal Academy in 1779 – but involved herself in the obscure business of schooling with characteristic energy and intelligence: she liked the boys and did not sentimentalise them, and she ...”