“... political circumstances of its emergence impelled it to be framed as it was? These are by no means foolish questions, but they are for the most part unanswerable, because our knowledge of the historical contexts is so fragmentary and the dating of the actual composition of many of the books so debatable. The result has been that a large domain of ...”

“... when Percy was the most successful tragedy of the time, and her closest friends were the actor David Garrick and his wife, Eva, was the cause of some dismay to sober-minded Evangelicals. But Roberts had an answer to that. He was not offering ‘a perfect specimen of Christianity’, but an account of a heroic triumph: More had mixed with the society ...”

“... Change’. These pieces, together with McFarlane’s insightful work from the 1940s, David Morgan’s from the 1990s and a later Catto piece on ‘The Burden and Conscience of Government in the 15th Century’, are his lodestars. The Henry he gives us is largely familiar: deeply religious, just in temperament, firm and busily active in points of ...”

“... of who really calls the shots in the UK. Rhetoric about ‘strengthening’ the union really means centralising the UK state, so that no alternative source of power can challenge the ‘sovereign’ absolutism of the Westminster parliament. Remember 1986? With a scratch of her pen, Margaret Thatcher ended the democratically elected self-government of ...”

“... at the best of times – failed to perceive their good fortune; they still don’t.Although David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had played a central role in negotiating the agreement, many unionists believed they had been conned. While the agreement won the near unanimous endorsement of nationalists in Northern Ireland, it was ...”

“... products but for the most part embarked on alone. The world has ceased to be story-shaped, which means that you can make your life up as you go along. You can own it, just as you can own a boutique. As the current cliché has it, everybody is different, a proposition which if true would spell the end of ethics, sociology, demography, medical science and a ...”

“... case, that tense and gender.If​ you think you know what the 17th-century poet Anne Southwell means by referring to Minerva’s owl, you are probably wrong. Southwell is alluding to Ovid’s story of a jealous crow, who worries that the owl has usurped his position as Minerva’s favourite. The owl is Nyctimene, a princess who was raped by her father and ...”

“... its satisfactions, become patient and make room for the future? Blueprint for a Green Economy, by David Pearce, Anil Markandya and Edward Barbier, is a report drawn up by the London Environment Centre for the UK Department of the Environment. It is a state-of-the-art review of ‘Sustainable Development, Resource Accounting and Project ...”

“... to the Indian population, though often through the efforts of Indian doctors and philanthropists. David Arnold’s book covers the early 19th century in greater detail and includes a chapter on the anguished responses to the first cholera pandemic of 1818-25. He provides fascinating material on the period when Europeans were trying to come to grips with ...”

“... Life: A User’s Manual is an exception, though it has clearly taxed the ingenuity of David Bellos. A chapter of humorous visiting-cards, for example, produces only one instantly cross-cultural item (‘Madeleine Proust: “Souvenirs” ’ – not one of Perec’s subtlest efforts). Luckily there are occasions when a bon mot in French can be ...”

“... geographer, Peter Hall, as ‘a civilised form of apartheid’. Greenness is flexible. It means whatever each of us decides it should mean. Plenty of people, undeterred by history or events, see it as the natural habitat of the political Left. Peter Gould, in his very agreeable disinterment of the ideologies of the dawn of socialist parties in Britain ...”

“... be carried through. Thus the subordination of such majorities, by military, political or cultural means, is a central element of the whole orientation, which cannot be reduced to its ‘material’ or ‘industrial’ results. It is ironic that what is now seen as the central problem of the old industrial societies, in rising unemployment, is actually a phase ...”

“... precluded a career in the Royal Artillery (his father’s regiment), and given his lack of private means, it was essential that he pass into Sandhurst sufficiently high on the list to obtain a commission in the Indian Army. That year there were 45 vacancies and he was placed 45th. The Auk loved army life in India and worked hard at his profession. He became ...”

“... honestly and without malice is beside the point. Its astigmatism would verge on blindness. David Shipler’s book on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a book of this kind. All analogies have their limits, and the Palestinians are obviously not the occupied Germans after World War Two. Yet the basic flaw of Arab and Jew-its its a-historicity ...”

“... and Mann thought they were doing, but it is what the manner of their directing solemnly suggests. David Fincher’s Seven is rather different, since it has a clever plot and enough violent action for a whole series of movies, and certainly isn’t an essay. But it doesn’t see itself as just gory entertainment either, and it, too, is keen on the big ...”