“... with diagrams of blocks needed for an architectural project. Others were on pieces of paper which may have been preserved because they also contained notes, fragments of poems or drafts of letters, for example. Such drawings can be seen in New York, together with an outstanding selection of the small group of highly finished sheets that he made as gifts for a ...”

“... too, Kurdish leaders worry that they are over-extended and too reliant on the Americans, who may stop supporting them diplomatically and militarily once Raqqa and the last IS strongholds have fallen. Turkish intervention is one threat; another is the Syrian army, which – with Russian air cover – has surrounded IS at Deir Ezzor and will now want to ...”

“... 2008-9 talked about as if it were a more modest version of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That may be true, looking back, but at the time the crisis of 2008-9 had the potential to be far worse. ‘Never before,’ as Tooze writes, ‘not even in the 1930s, had such a large and interconnected system come so close to total implosion.’ Ben ...”

“... a Jesuit boarding school in Belgium where he mixed with English students: his lifelong Anglophilia may have begun there. In Paris he found success and social connections. He was trained by former students of Ingres along with Degas, who became a close friend, and met Whistler while copying an Ingres at the Musée du Luxembourg. Portraits of high society and ...”

“... Aquitaine famously accompanied her first husband, Louis VII of France, on the Second Crusade and may have participated in negotiations between him and her uncle, Raymond of Antioch. Much later, as queen of England, she represented her son Richard I while he was on the Third Crusade. At a humbler rank, the Cistercian monk Thomas of Froidmont wrote a Life of ...”

“... heated debate because another Ferdinand Marcos, his son and namesake, was elected president last May, winning almost 59 per cent of the vote. He seems to have succeeded in creating a new narrative about his father’s rule and downfall. In February 1986, more than a million Filipinos gathered on a stretch of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), which runs ...”

“... were so evident in history writing. The transactions Vaughan witnessed in the Antwerp Bourse may have reflected fluctuations in trade or the availability of bullion, but they were also affected by the gossip that was an integral part of any broker’s life, and by the reputation of a particular financial house or individual. One merchant renowned for his ...”

“... in a way they would not have if the perpetrators had been, say, Russian soldiers. While there may be some truth in this, it was the allegation that sexual violence was systematically used as a ‘weapon of war’ by Hamas that played a key role in flipping the duty of denial. The extent of the sexual crimes committed on 7 October remains unclear, as does ...”

“... that welfare paternalism would stamp out private initiative?The real ‘sheep’s clothing’ may be the Persian lamb coat that belongs to an ageing actress with hair styled like Thatcher’s – one of the grander spoils that Dale’s two scammers, Grace and Janice, pilfer from their ‘old dears’. Grace and Janice are false prophets who peddle the ...”

“... to ‘officialise’ Igbo domination of the Northern Region.Anti-Igbo riots began in Kano in May 1966, while Ironsi was still at the helm, and quickly spread to other northern cities. In all, several hundred Igbo were killed, some of whom hardly helped their cause by publicly displaying a famous picture from Drum magazine of a prostrate Bello, the ...”

“... a ‘rented room in Whalley Range’, about iron bridges and ‘a river the colour of lead’. In May 1983, Paul Slattery – who had photographed Joy Division in 1979, too, beside an industrial estate in Stockport – took some shots for Sounds of The Smiths standing in the ruins of Central Station, once the pride of the Midland Railway Company but by then a ...”

“... old programmes with the names of the amateurs given in full – ‘Dr W.G. Grace’, ‘Mr P.B.H. May’ – while the professionals are listed curtly as ‘Hutton’ or, at best, ‘Hutton, L.’? This was, of course, an utterly bogus distinction, as the leading amateurs were always paid juicy retainers. When Grace led a tour to Australia in 1873, he was ...”

“... Wilkin’s selection of 27 articles offer a reasonable overview of Dupin’s analysis. Readers may, however, be perplexed by their argument that Dupin’s ‘Enlightenment feminism’ was limited by remainingembedded in contemporary white feminism, in which middle-class and wealthy white women aspire to the goods and prestige the most fortunate white men ...”

“... of myself as white. In an era in which many people lament the tyranny of identity politics, it may seem healthy that the state should discourage racial or ethnic identification.Yet since returning to France twenty years later, I have become disillusioned with French pseudo-universalism. Official colour blindness did not prevent the National Rally, a party ...”

“... or leaving it on her doorstep.Tóibín’s early novels aren’t notable for high drama. They may explore death and grief but it’s the texture of ordinary life that sustains them: card games, house renovations, gossip, waiting for the postman, walking in the drizzle, shopping and drinking. There’s no lack of quotidian substance in Long Island, from ...”