“... same person.’ The words of Lady Bracknell, one of the wisest characters in English literature, may eventually be echoed by readers when and if they have worked their way through the four, totally diverse, biographies of Graham Greene which originally appeared in the summer and autumn of last year. The biographers are Norman Sherry, Anthony ...”

“... himself of this opinion as he returned to the company of Bronson Alcott and Jones Very. One may well feel that the defensive condescensions of provincialism could hardly go further. Clearly, Emerson was more at ease among the undemanding tranquillities of Concord than amid the provocative and turbulent stimulations of Europe. He lived on until ...”

“... retained the mind-set of the inter-war years and saw no need for radical change. And what, it may be asked, was wrong with that? These people (few of whom in fact had ‘upper class’ backgrounds) were impregnated with the kind of social conscience that had become commonplace among the professional classes since the days of ‘New Liberals’ like ...”

“... the Fifties, quotes Eden as writing just before he resigned the premiership in January 1957: ‘It may be than the United States’s attitude to us in the Middle East dates from our refusal to give up Buraimi.’ And Burrows asks: ‘Can it really have been that important?’ It was. Strictly speaking, Buraimi was one desert village in the middle of ...”

“... attempt to resurrect the school spirit on the battlefield has a foretaste of doom about it. Tears may after all be in order, tears hardly knowing what they mean, though one knows only too well what they meant for Wilfred Owen in the Somme trenches 24 years later. After that war Newbolt was soon forgotten – in spite of a hugely successful tour of ...”

“... Germany and Austria after 1905. Their equals, emblems of a manner of life doomed by impending war, may be found in almost every bourgeois city-suburb of Europe. If these houses resonate at all, it is not for any special virtue of their own, but because Brooks is adept at capturing the quixotic intensity of belief which Jeanneret brought to their creation. Was ...”

“... plainly, and directly against the essence of a Common-wealth … That the sovereign power may be divided. For what is it to divide the Power of a Common-wealth but to Dissolve it? For Powers divided mutually destroy each other.’ In what Hobbes called ‘a mixt monarchy’, where the power of levying money depended on a general assembly, the power ...”

“... fears of nuclear war, there is barely a mention of the influence that US domestic politics may have had on the course of events. Theodore Voorhees’s study is different. He highlights the all-important fact that in October 1962 John F. Kennedy was about to face congressional midterm elections. The results would determine the fate of his presidency, as ...”

“... to murder, and numerous counts of arson, kidnapping and assault. Haggarty was released in May 2018, after four months’ imprisonment. Leahy picks out the case of Denis Donaldson, a member of Sinn Féin who was recruited as an informer by the RUC Special Branch. He was arrested in 2002 by the PSNI (which had replaced the RUC the year before) for ...”

“... it prevents me from absorbing any knowledge into my brain.’ If such a disorder exists, it may be transmittable via text, because that’s what these stories did to me. After reading them once I couldn’t remember anything about them – the titles, the characters, structures, written in first or third person, what (if anything) happened in ...”

“... back against the occupation or pressing for membership of international organisations – they may withhold the revenue, starving the PA of funds and making it difficult to provide even minimal public services. Universities on the West Bank can usually employ visiting academics from outside Palestine for only one month before a permit is required; the ...”

“... one can pin it down no more closely than by calling it ‘anti-establishment’. Michael Frayn may have excoriated that phrase – in his brief, brilliant introduction to the published text, Beyond the Fringe, in 1963 – as denoting ‘a spacious vacancy of thought’, but really, I don’t see how we can do any better. Any real ‘establishment’ is ...”

“... doing.’ He told journalists that at least some of the deaths of incarcerated people this year may have been due to ‘pre-existing conditions’. During his election campaign Adams promised to close Rikers, but his commitment appears to be wavering. The city budget for the coming year provides funding for an additional 578 corrections officers. Jarrod ...”

“... renown, he needed to emerge as the victor of that day’s clash of the titans. The world at large may have believed that the Newtonian order had been overturned and that from now on everything was ‘relative’, but there were many who were still sceptical of the implications of relativity, not only philosophers but scientists too, among them even some of ...”

“... But protest is not the same as a whole-hearted endorsement of far-right positions. Meloni may have warned France and Germany that ‘the party is over,’ but the Fratelli are condemned to continue the ‘reforms’ started by Draghi: if Italy doesn’t meet 55 ‘milestones’ by December, Brussels won’t release the billions the country desperately ...”