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“... of these for yourselves.’ Canadians and Australians could say much the same: the entrenched powers of their provinces and states remain the lynchpins of the remarkably successful federal systems bequeathed by their former colonial masters (the same is true, to a lesser extent, of the more centralised Indian constitution). But in the UK itself? Scarcely ...”

“... locating Lewis as he begins to rely not on parents and well-meaning teachers, but on his own powers of escape. To the end, he was a somewhat brutal (if you ask his wives and children) and yet talented organiser of his own life; it grew from a knowledge, maybe a conviction, as Evans has it, that ‘almost nothing any adult did for him when he was young ...”

“... Christian, but in important contrast to the Middle East, the region was never colonised by Western powers, which allowed it to become the repository of any manner of fantastic imaginings. Goldsworthy explores this history of Western perceptions and prejudices by tracing the development of Balkan images in English literature from Byron through The Prisoner of ...”

“... Spanish Empire (in which the king ruled each region under a different title and with different powers) into a strong, unified monarchy, whose ruler, Philip IV, officially described from the early years of the reign as ‘Philip the Great’, would enjoy the reputation he deserved. ‘Reputation’ was a key concept in the political thought and political ...”

“... their Ottoman overlords that broke out in 1916, and which was a significant help to the Entente powers in their war against the Turks’ ally, Germany. But helping the Allies hadn’t been his main aim. What he had wanted was for the Arabs to take the opportunity of the war to seize power for themselves, in a great pan-Arab federation if possible. He ...”

“... Neal Ascherson, Mary Beard, Jonathan Coe, Tom Crewe, William Davies, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Lorna Finlayson, Daniel Finn, Katrina Forrester, Jeremy Harding, Daisy Hildyard, Colin Kidd, James Meek, Ferdinand Mount, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Parry, David RuncimanNeal Ascherson‘On​ 17 June poor France fell ...”

“... those failed politicians, Philip and Algernon. The biographies by Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jonathan Scott are explicitly concerned to get behind the legends. Philip has been mythologised as the model Renaissance and Protestant courtier, whose courage and heroism led to a tragic early death at the battle of Zutphen in 1586. Algernon has been ...”

“... retire to the basket chair with a hurt expression or the remark ‘Mummy doesn’t want me, Jonathan.’ You will find me harder to dispose of than that, Precious, & J will be old enough by then to know when he’s playing gooseberry & will tactfully retire to the bathroom whilst we try and make up for lost time, holding close to each other & forgetting ...”

“... social and economic problems – which is why winning the World Cup was held to be so important. Jonathan Fenby’s fine book, On the Brink: The Trouble with France, explores the multi-faceted nature of this crisis, from the decline of the baguette to widespread political corruption. Many British observers (though not Fenby) derive a certain amount of ...”

“... the nuclear arms race has also received considerable inspiration from a series of articles by Jonathan Schell which appeared this past February in the New Yorker. These articles have now been reprinted in book form, and are continuing to have a profound impact on people’s thinking about the nuclear threat. The book is divided into three sections. The ...”

“... When the hero of Jonathan Raban’s new novel is scolded for living in a world of his ‘own construction’, the implied rebuke falls flat: this, for Raban, is the whole point of America. Raban’s travel books present America as a ‘glittering fiction’, a country shaped by the ardent imaginings of its immigrant millions and by the universal reach of its popular fables – ‘the mythology of the western and the romance of the frontier ...”

“... In January 2010, Jonathan Katz was working in Haiti for the Associated Press, the only American news organisation with a permanent bureau there. Other foreign journalists lived there, and a few more flew in for elections and catastrophes, but for the most part Haiti coverage had become a casualty of slashed budgets at dying newspapers and magazines ...”

“... at his christening in the Lutheran Nikolaikirche he was commended for his exceptional spiritual powers. Afterwards he achieved renown as the child scholar who would browse for hours on end in his father’s library, while the teachers at his Latin school had difficulty curbing his ‘unseasonable and precipitate’ appetite for logic and secular ...”

“... writer, it might start from the word ‘magisterial’ itself. Magister, a master. Swift’s powers as an educator – of individuals, of a class, of a nation – have always been acknowledged but have never been traced with such keenness as here. Of the young Hetty Johnson, Ehrenpreis says: ‘She had black, black hair and the enchanting gift of ...”

“... lid was clamped on nationalist aspirations. In 1848 patriotic rebellions broke out all over Italy. Jonathan Keates’s The Siege of Venice examines the longest-lived of the rebel states that came into being. With its broad view of the 1848 experience across Italy and its detailed account of political developments and divisions in Venice through the city’s 18 ...”