“... included a couple of Bolshevik women from the Russian intelligentsia, one of whom (Ludmilla Stal) may have inspired his pseudonym. Fifteen affairs in two decades of mainly unmarried life in a free-living revolutionary milieu hardly qualifies Stalin as a womaniser, and Montefiore admits as much, noting that ‘women ranked low on his list of priorities, far ...”

“... on the poem, is a French slang term for lesbian that gained currency in the 1920s and 1930s. It may have derived from the fashion for dressing up in male evening dress in beau monde lesbian circles during this period – tuxedo-wearers were often compared to pingouins. Bishop’s Penelope Gwin (or Pen Gwin) travels light, carrying with her only two ...”

“... he has been living in a ‘cell’, ‘a poor cell’ in fact, or even a ‘full poor cell’. It may sound like a grotto, if a minimalist one, but it is never called that.Shakespearean drama would only acquire a grotto decades later. While Edmund is feigning remorse at having connived at his father’s arrest for treason in Nahum Tate’s 1681 acting version ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of the lawless deeds of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia. Conveniently assonant as the two names may be, the crimes of Naples are not those we associate with the Cities of the Plain, and Saviano is not the righteous man who withdraws when God steps in to incinerate the sinful townsfolk. On the contrary, he seems to be drawn to what he abhors, and does ...”

“... Hofmannsthal comes across as a tremendously unappealing figure.† To begin with, he was, if I may put it in British Rail parlance, the wrong sort of prodigy, i.e. not a rebel or iconoclast, but a young man who pleased and impressed his elders. He was a dishy and precocious 16-year-old – still chaperoned by his banker father – when he first appeared at ...”

“... his experience of Richard’s animosity and duplicity (others have speculated that the decision may have been taken later, perhaps even in early September). Naturally, given his earlier discussion of the succession issue, Mortimer devotes careful attention to the grounds on which Henry claimed to succeed his cousin and the question of why no reference was ...”

“... Middle Ages. The urban, literate, inscribing culture of antiquity, however much its existence may have been predicated on the Roman imperial war machine, was fundamentally civilian in outlook and affect; the fifth century witnessed its catastrophic impoverishment and the triumph of a military world where martial success was the main currency. For the ...”

“... devastation have left us almost as remote from the Edwardians as Muthesius was from Dürer, we too may at times feel like a curious traveller in this distant England, fascinated by minutiae. He explains the things that no contemporary English writer needed to mention and draws the reader deep into the texture of the domestic past. He explains how those ...”

“... than nothing. Death equals beginning to smell bad. Life – so culture knows unconsciously – may not have an opposite at all, just an ending. The very category Death – the making of nothing into something: a terrain, a concept, an object of knowledge, maybe even a person – is one of the species’ consolations. This is a materialist view. I want to ...”

“... you to sink your ships within six hours.’ Otherwise, the Royal Navy would ‘use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships falling into German or Italian hands’. Negotiations proceeded throughout the morning of 3 July, and Somerville extended the deadline for a French decision from 1.30 to 3 p.m. The deadline was relaxed again when Gensoul ...”

“... No shortage, no problems to plan for. Powell points out that climate change is not something that may happen to the American West or that is now happening only in the Arctic. It is here, now. And at the end of Dead Pool he describes what a post-climate-change South-West might look like – the book’s title, incidentally, is the term used to describe a ...”

“... Tóibín tackles one of his country’s defining narratives (and one whose contemporary resonance may soon be sharpened by the current economic crisis): the long and difficult story of Irish emigration. For much of the history of the Irish state, emigration was a national embarrassment, something it was difficult to talk about. This was equally ...”

“... Putnam once observed. One way out of this dilemma is to throw over Plato for Aristotle. There may be no perfect mathematical entities in our world, but there are plenty of imperfect approximations. We can draw crude circles and lines on a chalkboard; we can add two apples to three apples, even if they are not identical, and end up with five. By ...”