“... of England and Wales came to acquire its salient features, a transformation which, it now seems, may also bring about some fundamental rethinking in rural planning policies which have long passed unquestioned. The front-runner was W.G. Hoskins, an economic historian by training, who since the Second World War has inspired a great new army of local historians ...”

“... for evidence. The assumption that one can enter so completely into another person’s mind may endow a scholarly biography with the undertones of a romantic novelette: ‘The fear that she had destroyed Jogiches haunted her; could she have broken that man, so strong, so invincible? It was like a bad dream. Somehow she would get him back.’ More ...”

“... for so long on the subject of Churchill and the Second World War. Reading between the lines one may guess that in Gilbert’s view the evidence tells in favour of Churchill and against his critics. But since events are observed exclusively through the eyes of Churchill and his circle, we are back with the problem of the fly on the wheel of the coach. The ...”

“... confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative. Brooks called it correctly: the Republicans, egged on by their newly empowered Tea Party ...”

“... attest that the drones have inflamed public opinion across Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. It may be true, as Obama has claimed, that ‘most of al-Qaida’s top lieutenants have been defeated,’ but we don’t know who has replaced them. In Afghanistan, large numbers of local Taliban leaders have been killed, only to be replaced, so local observers ...”

“... with his novels of the 1970s: ‘I knew I wasn’t doing utterly serious work.’ That may be why his new collection begins in 1979, omitting as much of his published short fiction as it includes. The culture had changed, and so had DeLillo’s writing. The hippies of the hinterlands and the freaks in Times Square had ceded their place at the ...”

“... to write the book of the world – for instance, the criteria for the success of our attempt – may turn out to reflect certain peculiarities of ours. Is there something about the exercise that is fundamentally anthropocentric, for example? Or fundamentally ethnocentric? Or fundamentally androcentric? Perhaps what counts as an optimal description of the ...”

“... of the judge’s friends visited him in jail, demanding $50,000. He also thinks initial rulings may have gone against Maharaj because he didn’t pay up. Maharaj’s lawyer didn’t call for an investigation or a mistrial, and Stafford Smith believes this is because ‘Hendon was on a set fee. If the case had to start up again, he would have to spend days ...”

“... cap had to remain unmoved as the bodies tumbled into the pit at Minsk. Between 23 April and 2 May 1942, a series of meetings, some very protracted, took place between Himmler and his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, and between Himmler and Hitler. Although little is known of what exactly was said, Longerich concludes from the timing and intensity of these ...”

“... rocce sopra il Tajmyr.’ If Vostyach seems a less convincing idea in English than in Italian it may partly be that cultural predispositions are to blame. Marani’s Vostyachs ‘had found the passage towards another world in the darkness of the forests and had never wanted to turn back’ (‘nel buio delle foreste avevano trovato il passaggio verso un ...”

“... Octavian’s will to power and his genius for grasping it, they were not alone. Or again, it may be that Cleopatra actually got things right, correctly reading Octavian’s implacability early on and sticking with Antony to the end because, even after he no longer looked like a winner, there was no viable alternative. It was Antony who, in his dogged ...”

“... to say hokey) throughout: ‘Ah, the fickleness of love and hate in Baroque Rome’; ‘Bernini may have been expert in the carving of angels, but he was far from one himself.’ The account is pegged to the works of art, presented more or less in chronological order, but Mormando is clear that he is writing a biography, not art history. He is at his best ...”

“... criteria) as well as an upbringing on a farm where he killed and observed nature close-up may have contributed to this breakthrough; but it was possible only because of his astonishingly pliant play with language. ‘Pigs’ contains the lines ‘Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp./We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush./Us all fuckers ...”

“... Major believes, are a direct legacy of Marie Lloyd and Bessie Bellwood. Music hall may have started out raucous, but it gradually became more refined. The early theatres presented young women dressed only in flesh-coloured body stockings and one venue had to close when Wiry Sal danced the cancan with an enthusiasm deemed excessive by London ...”

“... on Grub Street without ever being seen by a soul, subsisting on gruel, salad and weak beer. She may have been intrigued by his unusual longevity. In 1646, perhaps feeling her own years, Jeffreys laid out 14d for Leonard Lessius’s Hygiasticon: Or, The right course of preserving Life and Health unto extream old Age. A much larger expense was clothing: early ...”