“... no longer smiles.’ Britain is no longer a distinctively Protestant, even a distinctively Christian nation. There is no great likelihood of war with a European nation, no obvious enemy without; no empire; no commercial supremacy; no obvious new ground on which to rebuild the national identity of Britain. Whether the Union can survive without a clearer ...”

“... Endymion and gifts for the local rulers, including some gunpowder and a kaleidoscope. To hide his Christian identity he assumed the unconvincing pseudonym ‘el Ritchie’. The reader can only watch in sad fascination as this little figure from Regency London, asthmatic and under-financed, recedes further and further into the dust and danger of Africa until ...”

“... in the feeling that belongs to it’. Some Southerners wandered further from the beaten path. William Brown Hodgson of Georgia entered the State Department in 1824 and, without the benefit of a university education, became the most prodigious linguist of his time. He played an important role in persuading American diplomats of the need to master other ...”

“... a logical yet slightly crazy synthesis between the principles of hierarchical purity and those of Christian morality. In his eyes, one disorder is always liable to lead to another, as with Cardinal de Bouillon, a sodomite who finally turned traitor, had strong links with the Jesuits, and got the great érudit Baluze in hot water for validating some of his ...”

“... only Confucius can guide a man ‘through the jungle of propaganda and fads that has overgrown Christian theology’.) And Voltaire outlined the picture of the sleeping dragon which was to inspire later dreams and nightmares. In their remote past the Chinese had made many discoveries ‘all at once’, but proved incapable of following them up, whereas the ...”

“... Harriet Westbrook, Shelley’s first wife. But it seems unlikely that the organised, ambitious and Christian young poet would have been attracted to a disorderly atheist like Shelley, or that she would have drowned herself had Shelley left her. After all, when Arthur Hemans deserted her, announcing that he was going to Rome to recover his health, she simply ...”

“... he is preoccupied with the images that come to define our collective and personal memories. Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve in 1921, Marker (one of his many pseudonyms) spent his childhood, depending on which story you believe, in Cuba, Mongolia or l’Ile aux Moines in the Morbihan. He attended the lycée Pasteur in Paris with ...”

“... and the possible derivation of late accounts like Snorri’s from learned European sources, Christian, Neoplatonic and even Judaic. This, though, turns attention away from the consistently idiosyncratic nature of the myths, which is the first thing everyone notices about them. The reason for O’Donoghue’s caution becomes clear in the book’s final ...”

“... with orgasmic sadism. As Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris note in Standard Operating Procedure, Christian iconography places at its centre an implement of torture and, in the stigmata, offers an all too human scourge with which to flay flesh raw. Of course, millions of Christians and infidels have proved unable to stay the pleasure until they reach the ...”

“... Newspaper Axis, American newspaper owners are shown putting their weight behind isolationism, what William Randolph Hearst preferred to call ‘America first’. He commissioned Hitler and Mussolini to write for his many newspapers (at $1 a word), and was delighted that Hitler had restored ‘character and courage’ to Germany. At a time when most Americans ...”

“... published an essay which concluded that ‘lynching is the aftermath of slavery.’ A year later, William A. Sinclair, who was born into enslavement, published The Aftermath of Slavery, a Study of the Condition and Environment of the American Negro. Terrell and Sinclair used the term ‘aftermath’ to make the point that their own era was contiguous with the ...”

“... that this occurred after the Reformation, for Thomas tells us that ‘since Anglo-Saxon times the Christian Church in England had stood out against the worship of wells and rivers. The pagan divinities of grove, stream and mountain had been expelled, leaving behind them a disenchanted world to be shaped, moulded and dominated.’ Although Thomas is right to ...”

“... death in 1658 – he was the de facto laureate to the new state. He also became tutor to William Dutton, who was a member of Cromwell’s household. At this time Marvell was referred to as ‘a notable English-Italo-Machiavellian’ – for reasons that are mysterious he had the reputation of being a crafty and powerful figure. In 1657 he entered the ...”

“... of his closest friendships remained formal, mediated through books; his longstanding translator, William Weaver, recalled Calvino flinching every time he was obliged to call him ‘Bill’. In a preface to Numbers in the Dark, a collection of short and very short stories, Calvino’s widow, Esther, quotes a note from 1943 that she discovered among his ...”

“... come as a total surprise to either Wilde or his wife. It was in the blood. Wilde’s father, Sir William, who was an eye surgeon, had three illegitimate children before his marriage. The year Oscar was born his father began an affair with Mary Travers, the daughter of a colleague. She was also his patient. When Sir ...”