“... by the Reformation. A Society of Antiquaries was duly formed, but it was abruptly closed down by James VI and I, who found its inquiries disturbing. The Situationists, proponents of among other things ‘psychogeography’, were a moving force behind the événements of May 1968, while in England the earth mysteries movement reawoke interest in ley ...”

“... and his extensive espionage work on behalf of Robert Harley, Defoe was an indefatigable writer. Peter Earle, in the introduction to The World of Defoe (1976), confesses the alarm he experienced when ‘with the contract signed, I began to realise just what I had let myself in for ... To my horror I discovered that Defoe was probably the most prolific writer ...”

“... of Hebrew at Oxford and Cambridge by Henry VIII, and later the influence of Rabbinical studies on James I’s Authorised Version, demonstrated the enhanced academic status of Hebraic studies, which were distinguished by the findings of Edward Pococke and John Lightfoot, and popularised through Baptists and Saturday-Sabbatarian ‘Judaisers’ such as John ...”

“... the most dubious morality. Building on the classic image of Walsingham as spymaster established by James Anthony Froude’s History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1856-70), his early 20th-century biographers, Sidney Lee and Conyers Read, presented him as an astute and distinguished patriot who laid the foundations for ...”

“... type of liberal democracy in which the oligarchs have been enjoying a free run’. When both Peter Mandelson and George Osborne find themselves compromised by their inability to avoid the company of unaccountable freebooters like Oleg Deripaska and Nat Rothschild it makes British democracy seem not so much corrupt as incompetent and weak. The politicians ...”

“... him as ‘modern’ from the start; the greatest work of classical republican theory in English, James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana (published in 1656), was written as a direct refutation of the ‘modern prudence’ of Leviathan. Hobbes subsequently looms in the emergence of modern scientific and philosophical inquiry – in Susan ...”

“... purpose’ than as a brief hiatus from ‘algorithmic citizenship’ (as the artist and writer James Bridle refers to our profiling by FAANG, aka Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google). In his​ earlier work Paglen approached the security apparatus from afar; in his recent projects he attempts to get inside its mechanisms. In this he follows the ...”

“... Since they also sing the praises of meekness as a political virtue, they are unlikely to prove Peter Mandelson’s favourite reading. Bobbio distinguishes four kinds of relation between ethics and politics. There are two brands of monism which respectively reduce ethics to politics (Hobbes) and politics to ethics (Erasmus, Kant); a more flexible form of ...”

“... that is both affectionate and scornful, runs like an underground current through his work. Henry James and Lenny Bruce are often taken to be Roth’s improbably paired patron saints, but it is possible to add Eleanor Roosevelt to the gallery – or at least Henry Wallace and Paul Robeson, whose names are murmured half-reverentially throughout Roth’s ...”

“... Party, a significant presence in the city’s unions and electoral politics. The Communists Peter Caccione and Benjamin Davis got the second and fourth highest number of votes in the city council elections of 1945, and the Communist-influenced American Labor Party elected Vito Marcantonio, perhaps the most left-wing member of Congress, to the House of ...”

“... unable to raise the revenue to pay the crews. After the Restoration in 1660, both Charles II and James II demonstrated enthusiasm and expertise in nurturing naval expansion. But the Royal Navy’s performance in the Second and Third Dutch Wars was uneven, and political and religious divisions among its officers and men enabled William III and the Dutch fleet ...”

“... it is an eirenic exploration, in which he never speaks unkindly of his rivals – for example, Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads – or of the dozen other new or newish books listed on Amazon that have ‘Silk Roads’ as part of their title; the topographical section of the London Library has a whole Silk Roads shelf. This is evidently an idea ...”

“... tenants. The Gregory clause was ‘a charter for land clearance and consolidation’, according to Peter Gray. ‘The substantial rise in evictions after 1847 was attributed largely to its introduction,’ according to Christine Kinealy. For the tenants whose potato crop had failed and whose families were starving, the Gregory clause was a nightmare. As a ...”

“... even Neville Chamberlain might have blushed. We learn this not from Blair’s memoirs, but from Peter Mandelson’s, which provide a much more complete account of the Blair/Brown relationship (they are also much easier to read, since Mandelson has no problem telling his story in chronological order).* Mandelson reveals that Blair frequently pledged to ‘do ...”

“... ones. The Professor’s House centres on the memories of an ageing historian, Napoleon Godfrey St Peter, and much of the book – the entire middle section, in fact – focuses on St Peter’s loving recollections of his former student Tom Outland, a prodigy and inventor who was killed in the First World War. The novel also ...”