“... all Hebrew books, claiming that ‘the perfidy of many Jews is such that they seek with diverse means to subvert our true and holy Christian faith.’ The state fined publishers, banished copies of Hebrew texts, burned yet more books on the piazza. With the Talmud banned and burned, what was left? The ghetto became a centre, instead, for the study of the ...”

“... image is trapped inside the prism. No one around you can see it – it’s almost a hallucination. David Hockney, who took up drawing with a modern camera lucida in 1999, described it in Secret Knowledge (2001) as projecting not ‘a real image of the subject, but an illusion of one in the eye’:At first I found the camera lucida very difficult to use ...”

“... identical complement of nuclear genes – clones, in the vernacular – could only be achieved by means of the transfer of nuclei from embryonic cells, and then only in non-mammalian species. There were excellent grounds for insisting on the impossibility of cloning from adult cells. For, although virtually all the cells in a mature animal contain the same ...”

“... in its own destiny in this respect. Its peculiar saving mission, that of liberating mankind by means of the creation of wealth, would make little sense without some underlying faith in the prospect, perhaps even the certainty, of limitless improvement. The author of The Idea of Progress in 18th-Century Britain, an interesting and carefully crafted ...”

“... conservation in certain respects implies political conservatism, whether reverence for the land means reverence for the nation, whether there is not something fascistic about the atavism of deep Green thinking. Malthus is often viewed as little better than a fascist, yet, as Gore recognises in Earth in the Balance, his inexorable principles of population ...”

“... remark, made by a bystander and reported in an early book on the case. Congru, we learn, means correct, grammatical. ‘One doesn’t have to be a demon in order not to know Latin,’ Johnson slyly adds; but then one probably isn’t a demon if one doesn’t since fluency in all tongues is an orthodox, privileged sign of demonic possession. Daniel is ...”

“... to his Republican opponent in November’s Presidential election. But if Dayton is to work, this means that an inordinate amount of political progress has to be made in Bosnia in a ludicrously short time. If the constitutional status of Bosnia-Hercegovina remains unclear at the end of Ifor’s mandate, then there is a good chance of the country sliding back ...”

“... Reductive talk about a ‘core’ curriculum, initiated by that debate, has served since then as a means of channelling limited expenditure away from the question of what curriculum into a particular set of pressing short-term concerns. The Council has sometimes been unwieldy and has not always been good at applying pressure where and when it was needed, nor ...”

“... life. But they also exist, and much more importantly, outside it: that is, after all, what one means when one calls them timeless. And since Stendhal didn’t achieve proper recognition until long after his death, should one not prolong his biography beyond the moment on 22 March 1842 when a stroke felled him as he was walking down the Rue ...”

“... In Britain privilege still means power, but power no longer means class. The British ruling class is long since dead. Its day was over when neoliberal think tanks dethroned liberal-humanist intellectuals and nobody was any longer interested in how to combine Adam Smith with the Bible, or the rule of the many with the wisdom of the few ...”

“... out. After walking less than a kilometre we saw some other villagers running away, which usually means they know there are Taliban close by and that there will soon be fighting. Not long afterwards a single shot was fired, then dozens of shots that seemed to be coming from all around us. I lay down in the grass next to Sergeant Major Glenn Snazle, who ...”

“... All information outlets must be shunned. Some public service. On the other hand, if the World Cup means so much to me, why don’t I do what several thousand other armchair fans have had to do this season – sign up with Sky TV? On Sky, I would get not only the World Cup but also the pick of the Premier League action, plus Eurosoccer by the yard, plus The ...”

“... that far country through study and then begin to remember it as their own birthplace. Others, like David Donald and Jeffrey Hart, remember it first and then study it up in order to flesh out their memories with circumstantial detail. In either case, historiography is given the task that Wordsworth assigned to poetry: to reconcile the seemingly unrelated worlds ...”

“... that role. Any granddaughter could be proud of Bertie and Tap. But eventually Bertie’s dim son, David, became Lord Redesdale (his elder, grander brother having been killed in action) and David married Tap’s dim daughter, Sydney. David and Sydney did not know how to be Lord and Lady ...”

“... And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem’ – because he was of the house and lineage of David – ‘to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.’ The precise detail, it is often said, conveys that concern with ...”