“... all others’. Life, he thinks, ‘tends to pour all beings into identical moulds’, and he, too, may be overcome. Perhaps Crayencour also gave the story to his daughter as a warning – one she heeded. In her seventies, Yourcenar said her father was ‘perhaps the freest man’ she had ever known.She had already surpassed her father’s rather thin theme in ...”

“... with new thousands of innocent dead, it will be the response of a nation merely. I fear that we may do that, but hope that we will not. By what we do now, and what we refrain from doing, we ought to wish to be seen to act on behalf of the human nature from which the agents of terror have cut themselves off. In the days after the planes hit, the US appeared ...”

“... states in Africa and Asia and no doubt Latin America as well (Cuba and Venezuela spring to mind) may wish to consider why the Jamahiriyya, despite mending its fences with Washington and London in 2003-4 and dealing reasonably with Paris and Rome, should have proved so vulnerable to their sudden hostility. And the Libyan war should also prompt us to examine ...”

“... ways in the biographies. She named her cat George Eliot, and planted references to Louisa May Alcott’s writing desk in her novels. In her correspondence with male friends from the university, Stafford began to create various self-mocking female personae – ‘Bessie Barnstable’ or ‘Florence Nightgown’ – who wrote in an exaggerated jocular ...”

“... which appeared under Mr Major’s name in various newspapers during the campaign – which may be why they read better than some examples of the genre. Nevertheless, these sorts of book are in perpetual danger of sliding from hard-nosed reportage into a glutinous ‘lives of the saints’ approach to their subjects and their immediate ...”

“... are sliding down the league tables of national wealth, income, longevity and productivity. This may reveal only our low expectations – but it may do something to explain why the public is so hard to arouse in the cause of political and administrative efficiency, and why it’s myopic to lash out at Whitehall rather than ...”

“... class system, of which the Army seemed a parody. For some, National Service stimulated a devil-may-care, what-the-hell spirit, instances of which are registered in my memory but not openly recognised by Trevor Royle and his tactful informants. John Dickson, the Kray Twins’ driver, displays that what-the-hell spirit, mingled with wary obedience to his ...”

“... West for both humint operations and intelligence collection from open sources. What Soviet sigint may lack in advanced technology, however, it can often make up by espionage. Even comparatively low-level spies like Geoffrey Prime in Britain and the Walker family in the United States are sometimes able to provide priceless technical intelligence. There is ...”

“... which takes its edge from the submission of your partner. Such pleasures dissolve the safety there may be in passion. Yet they are evidently intended to be a measure of the completeness of Catherine’s attempt to be – literally – everything to and for David, at the same time as they indicate strain in the relationship. Why must a woman be like a man to ...”

“... over-treatment in the US, while fund-holding and drug budgets are feared here because they may encourage under-treatment). Both parties also believe that the recent NHS reforms are of quite momentous significance. A foreign observer might at first be puzzled, since the reforms appear to consist mostly of accounting changes, and will still leave the UK ...”

“... injustice to the unprotected.’ The fact that he is not also molested in the introduction may be a gratifying mark of the respect still shown towards the episcopate by Conservatives in Oxford. But both Plant and Sykes seem to have walked unwarily into the common room of All Souls from another sort of conclave or conventicle in which they would have ...”

“... do is introduce an occasional ‘joke’ (a subversive dog) into a conversation piece, which ‘may have provided a source of positive reassurance to a culture that had still entirely to resolve its deeply conflicting feelings about the morality (or lack thereof) of luxurious behaviour’. Hogarth’s parody, a drunken revel called A Midnight Modern ...”

“... man’s Providentially-assisted recovery of pre-lapsarian wisdom, has led us to expect). It may therefore be preferable to regard the idea as a final prophetic warning to modern man, a plea for the preservation of religious authority against the corrosive effects of scepticism. Lilla has written a substantial and scholarly book, even if he ...”

“... for something in particular, and moreover to be disappointed at not finding it.Of course, you may object, this story is too elaborate. Too ‘conspiratorial’. If the rozzers want to do an old-fashioned fit-up, they can simply produce the letter from one of their own pockets, hand it to the suspect so as to get some fingerprints, and then ...”