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“... defender of a view that, in its logical structure and basic values, adheres to the tradition of John Stuart Mill. Raz believes that liberal institutions are justified because, for those civilisations capable of sustaining them, they provide the best way of promoting human well-being: their value, in other words, is instrumental. The argument depends both on ...”

“... were taught by instructors in riding halls or on rinks; a drawing shows riders spilling freely in the Velocipede Riding School in New York (a foretaste of those electrifying velodrome pile-ups occasionally seen on television). The bicycle, as its advocates pointed out, did not need to be fed oats. It was cheaper than a horse and perhaps cheaper than ...”

“... make women? At 19 she was close to suicide, but found strength to go on from reading Emerson and John Stuart Mill. These are her own landmarks, ‘disconnected but indelibly printed in the mind’. At 20, she began to write The Story of an African Farm. If she had been the child of an English Evangelical parsonage, she would have been conforming, in her ...”

“... account of the history of the Alexandrian library and its collections, with chapter after chapter freely dramatising its key moments and final destruction. We read, for example, of the Alexandrians’ pursuit of the library of Aristotle which had been bequeathed to the insignificant Neleus of Scepsis – who manages in the end to dupe the messengers of the ...”

“... of the material is drawn from the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke, with Mark behind them and John ignoring them. They offer accounts of the infancy of Jesus that are often quite wildly at odds with one another, but anyone wanting to retell the tale can pick and choose, ignoring conflicts of testimony and adding more if desired. It does not bother many ...”

“... include one of Thomas Holcroft and William Godwin, as spectators at the trial of fellow radical John Thelwall, that shows every sign of being done swiftly, but delicately, on the spot; portraits like that of Mary Hamilton, made in 1789, show his flattering response to pretty women in full, early bloom. A study for Satan as the Fallen Angel shows why ...”

“... convertible.’ (How many party programmes anywhere pledge to make their country’s currency freely tradeable on the world’s financial markets?) Is this Communism à la Friedman? Not wholly. Later on in the programme there are references to ‘rapid but orderly’ moves to a market in which ‘a high social price is not extracted from the ...”

“... a mouthful of gold teeth was trying to rouse a group of bystanders in support of her own opinions, freely bestowed on a young priest. ‘Tell him,’ she implored them. ‘Speak to him; tell him the Church must save Russia, the Patriarch must save Russia.’ Earnest and struggling to get his words in, the priest explained that this was not the Church’s ...”

“... voluble season of introspection which he claims is a novelty for him. To think as much and as freely as Sartre did on active service is an act of defiance; the soldier’s mind is intended to be dulled into grumbling acquiescence. But Sartre’s meteorology was soon done and the rest of his time was for reading and writing: ten or eleven hours a day by ...”

“... heartily. Deng says that from now on he just wants to live the life of a common man and walk freely in the streets. It is a touching sketch of a great – little – man retiring in the twilight of life after a job well done. There are only two problems about it. First, the job went horribly wrong six months before in Tiananmen Square. Second, he has not ...”

“... of architecture is replete with figures whose careers were tied to the fortunes of great cities. John Nash’s genius for town-planning could only have flourished in London during the post-Waterloo boom years. Stanford White’s feeling for opulence fits the New York scene of the 1890s like an evening glove. So, too, did mid-Victorian Glasgow define the ...”

“... among members tends to engender bias. Since they want to be valued by the group, members freely express opinions in line with what they perceive to be the group’s attitudes and suppress those that run counter to those of the group. A prejudicial breeze soon develops. Leaders arise who are more extreme than the average member. They typically pick ...”

“... who had once been part of that drinking culture but had gone sober. One was Campbell. Another was John Reid, who gave up drink in 1994 after having acquired a reputation as a serious boozer. McBride effectively finished Reid’s political career in 2007 when he fed poison about Reid’s past to the papers. But why did Brown tolerate it? Even McBride seems ...”

“... cultic practice. The Shias, by contrast, have developed their religious thought more freely, and are more open to other systems of thought. ‘It is hardly surprising that early Christianity, with its roots among the common people, should show some distance from writing,’ Schniedewind remarks. This is a bit peculiar, since in early Christianity ...”

“... their work, especially when it manifested itself as self-conscious ordinariness in poets such as John Masefield and Wilfred Gibson. Thomas felt that trying to be down to earth was part of the same problem; instead he wanted a poetry whose interplay of self-expression and common forms would always make it mean more than the writer could choose or control ...”