“... to pack a wicker hamper And have a picnic down a disused mine, But still the odd factotum like Jim Prior At least seemed relatively a live wire. Now Prior’s gone and in comes a new broom Named Twitchit. Rabbit? Sorry, I mean Hobbit. His eyes like lasers penetrate the gloom. He takes the nation’s pulse like William ...”

“... royal adviser said, ‘to be put in a new romanso’ – when the future Charles I and his father James I’s leading minister the Duke of Buckingham donned false beards, assumed the names Tom and John Smith, and journeyed to the Spanish court to woo the infanta for Charles? Incognito travel, a commonplace practice of the age, produced a succession of ...”

“... sculptors such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin and installation artists such as Walter de Maria and James Turrell, and certainly the early projects underwritten by Dia, from permanent exhibitions in New York City to massive earthworks in the American desert, were grand. Among the best known is The Lightning Field, a vast grid of 400 stainless-steel poles staked ...”

“... of the excised sections of evidence aren’t very well blacked out). And here is a question put by James Dingemans QC (Lord Hutton’s chief – and, currently, chiefly benign – inquisitor) to Alastair Campbell: ‘Mr Powell told us yesterday that you had told him that Mr Baldwin had told you that the person who told him this information was Mr ...”

“... as an alternative to earlier autonomous individualism, and in a penetrating chapter on Henry James, Max Saunders explores how James’s memoir-writing affected his novel-writing: his recognition that ‘really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw … the ...”

“... My brief was to write about an aspect of my research that would interest people who had no prior interest in philosophy and who knew nothing about Wittgenstein. I chose to write about the controversy concerning Wittgenstein’s sexuality, putting forward an abridged version of the argument I develop in my book that there is no evidence for the ...”

“... some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the early colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially of the southern colonies, could most aptly be characterised as agrarian precapitalist and … Will, who at this point … is completely fed up, includes himself in the conversation. WILL: Of ...”

“... in the higher ranks of the Metropolitan Police. These were of course inherited from events prior to his own appointment. A committee of investigators had already been set up under the chairmanship of Leonard Burt, then an Assistant Chief Constable of the Dorset Police. McNee was, however, greatly dissatisfied with the slow progress made by this ...”

“... accept at least some of the responsibility for this state of affairs. It refused to go into the Prior assembly, arguing that the parameters within which that assembly would be forced to work were unacceptable. Its real fear, however, was that by participating in the new institution it would leave the electoral high ground to Sinn Fein. The party seems not ...”

“... row going on among the professionals who deal with the real thing. This powerfully written book by James Barr is for the most part a polemic against a new wave of Biblical criticism called by its proponents ‘canonical criticism’, and to get the hang of Barr’s book one needs some idea of what he is attacking. Canonical criticism is not a one-man ...”

“... who turned to the church only as the next best thing. It seems to have been at the behest of King James I, who valued the theological learning in which Donne was proficient, that he opted for ordination. Certainly the decision was in keeping with the spirit of a royal entourage where scholarly divinity mingled easily with worldly complaisance. He landed a ...”

“... are already seeking to change some of the rules of the Westminster game without having to secure prior electoral approval, seems both comic and mildly outrageous here. Much space has been given to Jon Stewart’s quip on the Daily Show: ‘Your country’s been around, what, a couple thousand years and you never got around to writing down your ...”

“... Act making it a crime to publish false criticism of the Government or its leaders – and that James Madison, the principal author of the First Amendment, had condemned the Act. It was a violation, he said, not only of the freedom of speech and press but of the whole premise of our new Constitution: that the people were to make the ultimate political ...”

“... history began with the proposition that the Stuart kings were a bad lot, given to homosexuality (James I), extravagance (Charles I), excessive wenching (Charles II) and a systematic attempt to debauch our ancient liberties and betray us into the hands of the Pope and Louis XIV (Charles II and James II). The enforced ...”

“... of its economy by conventional bombing and a comprehensive blockade – ‘in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.’ Eminent scientists, including Einstein, had issued statements deploring the use of the bomb, while the 31 August 1946 issue of the New Yorker had been ...”