“... described Albania as an ‘oriental’ country where ‘a certain amount of financial wisdom may have to be instilled by means of a revolver.’ By this time, the gun had mostly yielded to the pen – preferably wielded by a former colonial administrator. Nixon was impressed by one candidate for a job at the League who had ‘experience governing rather ...”

“... beneath you; beyond it the Mediterranean. Très beau panorama, the Michelin guide says, as well it may, since the name is not the nonsense word it looks but the Devil’s Latin, part of the sentence in which he offered to Christ the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them: Haec omnia tibi dabo si cadens adoraveris me, ‘All these things will I give ...”

“... when you set out to look the present in the eye but can’t quite bear the thought? Much of David Marquand’s powerful essay about ‘Britain, now’ is an elegy for a lost past, unsullied by ‘masterless capitalism’, a sad story of the light growing dim, good running to bad, the public realm hollowed out by vested interests, greed and unexamined ...”

“... beyond the Call of Duty: The Nature of Power within Psychiatry’. Typos can be dangerous. Reality may not be as exciting, but finding it can be a great relief to a troubled mind. I describe this passing moment partly as an example of how easy it is to lose one’s bearings about what makes sense, but also, quite gratuitously, to avoid grappling with my real ...”

“... his romantic revolutionary credentials early on in the book by remarking that: Official Britain may have its Valhalla of heroes and statesmen and conquerors and empire-builders, but we know that the highest point ever reached by European civilisation was in the city of Basel in 1912, when the leaders of the socialist parties of all countries met to ...”

“... has dispatched them.’) In Munich, Red Terror was followed by White Terror, which was worse. By May, it was all over. Many thousands of people were dead, and political life in Munich became what it was to remain for the remainder of the Weimar years, a running sore for the new Republic. Eisner had hoped to create in Bavaria a beacon for a new kind of ...”

“... range of reference, forcefully written and fairly eccentric, at times indeed slightly unhinged. It may well make him rich and famous, in the manner of Allan Bloom, Samuel Huntingdon and other purveyors of the slightly unhinged academic diagnostic blockbuster. But the arguments he musters and the warnings he issues are curiously similar to those that have been ...”

“... wide range of questions which occur (or should have occurred) to any intelligent reader. The title may suggest a Qumranic fantastication, or something like Robert Graves’s King Jesus, but Lane Fox’s purpose, though ambitious, is sober enough. He offers an ancient historian’s view of the Bible. This is ‘a book about evidence and historical truth, not ...”

“... is less of being in command than of being in pursuit.Once the hand leaves off, the marked surface may serve as a step in an inquiry or at least a historical record. We discard the sensation that originally held us gripped. Reversing that drift, the exhibition Drawing the Unspeakable at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne (until 27 April) points us back to mark ...”

“... those of Dutch 17th-century genre painting and of French 18th-century painting in general – may come as something of a shock to those members of the public who do not keep their ears uncomfortably close to the ground. There have been hints, of course – but Philip Conisbee’s book is in fact the first to bring to a wide public the new interpretation ...”

“... research grants and capital funding and can affect share prices. An adequately supported project may fail, but an overlooked one will not succeed. According to the Thomas Theorem popularised by Robert Merton: ‘If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.’ David Edgerton’s The Shock of the ...”

“... Obama remain in desperate competition for his endorsement, until he finally bestows it on Obama in May 2008). If Elizabeth Edwards should be blaming anyone for concealing the truth about her husband’s failings, it’s probably the mainstream media, which when presented with all the evidence they needed by the National Enquirer, decided to turn their noses up ...”

“... the press that Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ shortstop, a nice, inoffensive boy with cheekbones, the David Beckham of baseball, had promised him that ‘the ghosts would turn up eventually’. The Red Sox were at least spared the indignity of having their misfortunes blamed on some hapless idiot whose glove happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong ...”

“... which also features an eloquent Black pastor, on account of its condemnation of lynching. Sturges may have got lucky. When White left the country to take up a post as a foreign correspondent, the role of chief Hollywood inquisitor was assumed by the more combative Julia Elizabeth Baxter. Ellen Scott’s researches in the NAACP archive have revealed that ...”

“... with a chairman who accused me of being a disciple of Sorel, a writer of whom I had barely heard. (David Caute sardonically notes that ‘the allusion to Sorel was standard nonsense among professors of history and politics hostile to the New Left: one may search in vain for any favourable reference to Sorel in New Left ...”