“... to the Turks, who were often denounced for degeneracy – swords, slippers and sexual excess, as Richard Cobden put it – the Arabs were often admired for manly simplicity. David Urquhart, secretary at the embassy in Constantinople, wrote that Islam was not a false religion to be ridiculed: it taught no new dogmas, propounded no fanciful revelation and ...”

“... There is already a lot of biographical writing about Orwell, including the memoir of Richard Rees and The Unknown Orwell by William Abrahams and Peter Stansky (lamed by the late Soni Orwell’s refusal of permission to quote), and, more recently, the expansive Life by Bernard Crick, at first authorised by the widow to emphasise her rejection of Stansky and Abrahams, and later de-authorised by her to indicate disapproval of Crick, who, much to her annoyance, had lawyers good enough to ensure that he was able to publish it anyway, quotations and all ...”

“... as its background a society not primarily as a set of economic classes but as a patriarchy. The English class system, its pervasiveness, its endless subtleties, had once been a rich source for the English novel. The system whose laws, customs, religion and culture consistently sanction the economic ascendancy of one sex ...”

“... a leading article in the Times in March 1890 which called for a new gallery that ‘should do for English art what the Luxembourg does for the French’. The Museum of Modern British Art at Millbank, to give its original title, was meant to do exactly that, but hardly had it been founded than the model began to seem inadequate. A demand developed for a fuller ...”

“... been imported into the Anglo-British state in the form of the Freedom of Information Act. But, as Richard Norton-Taylor’s pugnacious book shows, it’s a newborn right still struggling to survive against a centuries-old tradition of government.The structure of the ‘British’ state is still essentially monarchical. Constitutionally, the rest of the ...”

“... accounts of Guevara’s impact on the conference, and his inconclusive private discussions with Richard Goodwin, one of Kennedy’s advisers. But this is well-trodden ground, and there is little new material. Many Latin American governments were still run by civilians, and under popular pressure to extend the hand of friendship to Cuba. But the American ...”

“... Brighton had several, and became the epitome of the beach. ‘You hear nothing and see nothing,’ Richard Jeffries wrote of Brighton’s beach in The Open Air (1885): It is perfectly comfortable, perfectly jolly and exhilarating, a preferable spot to any other. A sparkle of sunshine on the breakers, a dazzling gleam from the white foam, a warm sweet ...”

“... many of them violent. But the bit of plot there is takes us, finally, to an interesting place. Richard Cane, brilliantly played by Danny Huston, is an infinitely rich man who owns every technology and invention and effectively rules the world. We are no doubt supposed to think of whichever American billionaire we like least. The trouble is that although ...”

“... the post-war period, he has established himself as this country’s leading critic within academic English of the very concept of ‘Literature’. So much so, that he would have preferred to see English Literature replaced as a core subject in our school and university curriculum by the study of Culture and of ...”

“... his time between Germany and North America. Many of his writings have been translated, and the English version of his major work on Truth and Method has helped to extend his fame. His thought now enjoys a considerable vogue in the English-speaking world. Gadamer was born in Breslau at the turn of the century. His father ...”

“... the two generations of Romantic poetry. It did more than that, though: it caught a moment in English social and intellectual life, an engaging as well as a brilliant moment, and one that was about to pass. Distinctions that would soon harden into opposition, between art and science, art and commerce, professionals and amateurs, were still unclear, up for ...”

“... in this last group were discussed in 1952 by J.K. Fuz in a pioneering work, Welfare Economics in English Utopias, to which Dr Davis refers only in a dismissive footnote. Davis also shows that Burton was an early advocate of something like a welfare state. This book reinforces our awareness of the problem of scarcity in 16th and early 17th-century ...”

“... To bring them up to date is no doubt the general editorial policy pursued in the Longman Annotated English Poets series, for which these are the first two volumes of a projected four-volume Dryden; and this seems right on the whole, although the italic and capitals of the original give it the zest and insinuation of a speaking voice, which is important to ...”

“... In 1549, the West Country rose in rebellion against the first of Archbishop Cranmer’s new English liturgies, denouncing it as ‘a Christmas game’. Exeter was besieged, troops were sent against the rebels, half of them foreign mercenaries, many lives were lost, and the leaders, including some clergy, were strung up. To measure the distance ...”

“... a criminal, and probably by some way the most distinguished criminal ever to have won a place in English letters. Despite a reasonably secure and prosperous background in Warwickshire life, he quite suddenly began a career of violence by lying in wait, with 26 others, to murder Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham and Earl of Stafford, in 1450. The ambush failed, so ...”