“... If​ you’ve been following White House briefings and mainstream US media over the past four years, you could be forgiven for thinking that Trump has radically rewritten US foreign policy. In fact, despite Trump’s pledges to extract American soldiers from foreign conflicts, troop numbers have barely fallen overall and have risen in the Persian Gulf ...”

“... advertise and illuminate other writers and artists. Peter Marshall does so in his new biography, William Godwin. Hazlitt’s vivid account of Godwin’s political importance appears on the first page of Marshall’s introduction, and his worthy book is studded with variations on ‘as Hazlitt rightly observed’. He accepts Hazlitt’s judgments as ...”

“... innovation of constructing an interlocking system of classes, terms and names was so significant, William Whewell argued in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), that modern systemic science could be said to begin with Linnaeus. Whewell wrote at a time when a wide variety of new lexical systems had been accepted as the matrices of scientific ...”

“... expert sufficiently aware of the intellectual currents to provide Parsons with accurate briefings. William Sullivan, US Ambassador to Iran during the crucial two years of the revolution, seems to have been better-informed in this respect, even if his understanding was superficial. ‘Shariati,’ he says, ‘attempted to reconcile socialism with Islam, and ...”

“... Defying the advice of the King of Hearts to the White Rabbit, the Oxford History of the Laws of England began in the middle, with the publication in 2003 of its magisterial sixth volume, written by the general editor, John Baker, and covering the years 1483-1558. It then went back to the beginning, with R.H. Helmholz’s opening volume on early canon law ...”

“... that determine character began to turn into slightly better grounded talk about nerves and brains. William Harvey discovered how the blood circulates in the human body. There was a tough-minded drive to find mechanical explanations. When England’s greatest living poet, John Milton, wanted to explain why we are as we are, he retold the ancient story of ...”

“... occasion align with Providence, as it had in the days of Andrew Jackson, the great champion of the white settlers on the frontier. Young Harry read Mark Twain, played the piano and listened to Mozart. He disapproved of boxing, guns and Wagner. Endowed with porch-front charm, he was self-conscious about his ‘girl’s mouth’ and his ‘inordinate desire to ...”

“... about whom and Harriet Beecher Stowe he writes his best criticism, the father is obviously White Master, though there is also White Mistress, in whose capacity to read and write, and in her willingness to teach them both to a young slave, Douglas begins to discover the instrument both of freedom and revenge. Fear of ...”

“... nervous illnesses which Richard Greaves unhelpfully approaches by means of psychiatric theory and William Styron’s compelling account of his own severe depression. In 1650 Bunyan had heard three or four women discussing religion: they were, he said, ‘far above out of my reach’, and he began seeking out the company of these people, who were members of a ...”

“... The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama ...”

“... symposium ‘on the Negro’. (Symposia on the Negro were popular in the 1960s, helping to keep white liberal panellists occupied and furrowed until the ferocious later phase of Black Power made them all squirm.) Kazin had been unable to attend the symposium itself but, never one to miss a party, popped into the reception being thrown by Commentary’s ...”

“... Waterloo Bridge and the Adelphi. The destruction of the Adelphi was deemed ‘inevitable’ by the William Morris scholar John Drinkwater, as though to oppose it would be derisive of the common mood. Robert Byron, less precious than usual, regretted that ‘according to official and ecclesiastical standards … a bit of the old Roman wall is of more importance ...”

“... A long pine table which gave Marks plenty of elbow room to roll his herbal mixes. He was in a white shirt, unbuttoned to expose ‘chunks of magical Buddhist gold’. The hair had recovered its collartickling insolence. The voice was strong, warm and macerated in phlegm. He had the genial, tannin glaze of a resting Stone: Ronnie Wood morphing into Bill ...”

“... spending programmes. Another hint of vitality is the traffic. Cars, carts, trucks and yellow and white Corolla taxis swarm past bearded old men on three-speed bicycles. They slow down at roundabouts and come to a halt near the highest walls for a hundred miles. Rising above the parapet, a concrete fortress casts its shadow over the soldiers outside. A taxi ...”

“... gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters. The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy ...”