“... ideas on witchcraft is presented as a system where ‘life is thought of as a full sack that may empty, or as an enclosed field that may open; death is thought of as the end result of suction by a vacuum, is the active principle which alone causes the force to circulate.’ Her Bocage hosts are given a patronising pat ...”

“... Carthaginian system of government is known only sketchily and some of what Latin authors tell us may be calqued from Roman models. Two elected magistrates called sufetes were elected annually from among the city’s leading families but, unlike Roman consuls, did not command armies. Generals were elected separately and there was also a powerful body of ...”

“... just that the volatile aromas in a ripe tomato are killed by the cold, or that the ripeness may be generated by ethylene rather than the sun, but that most of the tomatoes grown commercially don’t have the ‘genetic capacity’ to be delicious, as the plant breeder Harry Klee told Twilley. Tomatoes, she writes, are bred for ‘the sturdiness to be ...”

“... divine John Edwards surmised that ‘there is scarcely a Town where there are not some that may justly be reckon’d in this number.’ The widespread anxiety about the rise of irreligion reflected in sermons, pamphlets and tracts is hard to reconcile with the shortage of actual instances of articulate unbelief. This intriguing paradox lies at the heart ...”

“... are even some snatches of gossip and odd bits of biography. The young Lacan met James Joyce and may have psychoanalysed Picasso. He was also consulted by Sartre, who happened to be having hallucinations at the time. We learn that Foucault and Derrida couldn’t stand each other, rather as one imagines Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver don’t get on too ...”

“... Great Council which met at Whitehall that evening. James himself did not arrive in London until 7 May, having deliberately waited until after Elizabeth’s funeral.All the same, accounts of Elizabeth’s ‘nomination’ and James’s straightforward succession are ultimately misleading. The queen had not only steadfastly refused to name a successor but had ...”

“... X exceptional. Against the book’s impulse to make friends is the idea that political separation may be the only way certain desirable civic conditions can come to pass. Lacey has said that creating a political near-paradise (though even here, the leftists still like in-fighting) seemed to her necessary in order to write freely about same-sex marriage in the ...”

“... Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, was stopped last May by highway patrol. As soon as the other two male passengers in the pickup truck his mother was driving were flagged as undocumented, Laynez-Ambrosio was dragged out of the vehicle with them (they used a stun gun on one of the other men), arrested and ...”

“... moment isn’t something closer to hopeful cynicism. That isn’t necessarily the paradox it may seem. The impression I have after years of teaching is that cynicism is the defining characteristic of many sharp-eyed young people. Pessimism is not fatalism, and neither is cynicism. Cynicism doesn’t mean ‘I don’t care’ or ‘It’s ...”

“... it seems to me, by his evident Liberal sympathies – is that the SDP’s main achievement may, and probably will, be to put the Liberals in a commanding position in the next Parliament. The Alliance, he seems to think, is unlikely to win more than a hundred seats. Since most of them are seats where the Liberals are strong, they will mostly be ...”

“... and ‘if marriage doesn’t lead to “growth” ’, which after ten or fifteen years it may well not, the solution is simple: ‘dump it.’ Love is the last reason – ‘the entrancing delight of romantic love’. ‘Even the practical users of a marriage bureau aim to and “generally do fall in love”,’ says Gathorne-Hardy before asking the ...”

“... to exorcise a certain elusiveness from any Christian hinterland to The Lord of the Rings, he may have drawn comfort from the fact that similar dubieties have attended the exegesis of Beowulf itself. Is Beowulf a Christian poem? About this there used to be large debate. In the issue (if I remember aright) the Oxford English School at large denounced as ...”

“... a hit-and-run driver (the miseries in Wilson’s narratives are invariably the acts of a God who may perhaps just be an insurance company fiction). Giles remained, a sightless scholar blundering uselessly in his library. As we encounter him, he is attended by two virgins: his luscious teenage daughter Tibba and his dowdy amanuensis, Miss Agar ...”

“... the customs of a remote tribe. She is keenly aware that, as anthropologists have often done, she may be asking the wrong questions, and relying too heavily on modern analogies or notions. Her task is further complicated because there are no living natives to study or examine. The ancients speak to us, but cannot answer our inquiries; virtually every text ...”

“... did not rush to take up the invitation of the Dean and Chapter of Durham to write a life-of Henson may be gathered from what he says in the preface to this volume. He seems to have had serious, reservations about his subject. For him the author of Retrospect of an Unimportant Life was ‘many things ...”