“... to do with the Enlightenment? According to Brockliss, a great deal. Conventional though Calvet may have been, his correspondence shows that he shared the outlook and principal goals of the philosophes. While he and his correspondents cared more immediately about antiquarianism and natural history, they nonetheless had a serious commitment to freedom of ...”

“... Saddam, are able to judge that they ought. Kagan offers an analogy: A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative – hunting the bear armed only with a knife – is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will ...”

“... sand expressed the hope that ‘many centuries hence when other memory of it shall be lost, [they] may declare to succeeding ages that [this] place was once a member of the British Empire.’ Within a few days of this final appeal to posterity, the remaining settlers would be either dead or enslaved, the captives of Moulay Ismaïl, the Alaouite Sultan of ...”

“... Not for the last time, the Western powers ignored Arab public opinion and imposed their will. In May 1920, Britain assumed the League of Nations Mandate to govern a united Iraq within its new borders. Rebellion followed in June. In a display of unanimity that shocked the British, who had trusted the efficacy of Winston Churchill’s formula – ‘dividing ...”

“... screamed at my father and fought with him, more than Xanthippe did with Socrates.’ This may be a stereotype masquerading as autobiography (to show that Galen knows what he is talking about in a medical work on the diagnosis and therapy of the passions), but for the historian stereotypes are often more significant than individual lives: ‘A properly ...”

“... have been smoothed out by anatomical preparation. The glass eyes make them look vacuous. We may be able to guess their age, within a margin of error. Their sex will be apparent. Some organ deformation may give a clue to the cause of death. That’s about all that can be guessed of them in their singularity as social ...”

“... When we met in England, Ginsberg had abdicated another impromptu throne, as King of the May (Kral Majales) in Prague. He had been expelled for taking off his clothes during a reading to his student subjects. Further prophetic challenges lay in store. We went on a pilgrimage to Glastonbury. There, after pausing under the great conical chimney of the ...”

“... as supposedly common land is reclaimed. Police guard the Houses of Parliament, fearing protesters may try to get ‘inside’, but they wouldn’t bother. Chard and rhubarb are planted, with rosemary, lemon balm and hemp. A maypole is put up with a garland of flowers at the top and children hop round it. Someone sand-sculpts a huge-breasted Gaia opposite Big ...”

“... Irish Americans were embarrassed by the conditions they found when they visited Ireland. The Irish may be less ethnically visible in New York than they were, but they haven’t disappeared. In the 1980 census, 40 million Americans said they were descended from Irish people; by 1990, the figure had jumped to 45 million and this year’s census ...”

“... to the Ukraine and acted fast: within weeks he had analysed the desperate situation there and by May 1922 was successfully overseeing the distribution of relief. The following year, he went back to Kharkov, and found the situation much improved. When the work ended, he decided not to return to the General Staff: he accepted an offer of early retirement and ...”

“... win the next election, had by April swung to a 56-23 majority prophesying a Labour victory. In the May local elections the Tories won just 505 seats to Labour’s 1721, leaving Labour in control of 31 out of 33 metropolitan districts. Thatcher was on the ropes and it was entirely her own fault. At which point the Treasury (Major, Lamont) and the Foreign Office ...”

“... by the liquid refreshments.’ The outing was capped by a White House presentation of Patton; it may have been Nixon’s second screening of the day. Given the frequency with which Nixon watched movies, and what Feeney suggests of his belief in the medium’s magic, his viewing log provides any number of provocative juxtapositions. Nixon screened the ...”

“... but he does it with extraordinary gallantry. If he has, or gathers, a band of the emulous, we may look for some capital sport.’ James goes on to wish Symonds had more humour – ‘it really is the saving salt’ – but acknowledges, with a little humour of his own, that ‘the great reformers never have it.’ Leon Edel, the editor of the ...”

“... a positive feedback, via confidence, into political gains. It all seems too good to be true and may yet turn out to be so. Still, this is a timely moment to ponder these antiquities and curiosities of the exchequer and, remembering Titian, to profit from the Past, not only lest Future conduct go astray but also (let’s admit it) to license gossip and ...”

“... What the memoirist remembers, Neruda says, ‘is not the same thing the poet remembers. He may have lived less, but he photographed much more, and he re-creates for us with special attention to detail. The poet gives us a gallery full of ghosts shaken by the fire and darkness of his time.’ Living and photographing here are both metaphorical, and the ...”