“... to Newton, had its beginnings about 1125 BC among the Egyptians, followed by the Jews under King David in 1059, and then the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians (and no doubt the Chinese and the Americans too, though Newton didn’t mention them). But the main focus of Newton’s efforts was the Greeks. He dated the beginning of their entry into ...”

“... Fleming’s history is Volume II in the Penguin History of Britain, for which the general editor, David Cannadine, ‘laid down three inviolable rules’: no footnotes, no historiography (that is, no discussion of the ebb and flow of historical opinion), and make it accessible to everyone, general readers, students and professional historians alike (in other ...”

“... favouring the more critical view of another Cambridge professor (and Benedictine monk), David Knowles, put forward in Religious Orders in England (1948). When Dissolution came out in 2003, George Bernard had yet to advance his idea that the dissolution of the monasteries had as much to do with Henry VIII wishing to assert his royal authority after ...”

“... they are playing, it is not clear what they are doing here, along with such as Dugald Stewart, David Ricardo, the Mills, E.A. Freeman, Alfred Marshall and Graham Wallas. Are these the First Eleven, or just the first eleven names that cropped up? When the Whigs were in charge, at least we used to have an identifiable team of All Stars, whom the fans either ...”

“... printseller, as ‘an English Tradesman who patronises the art better than the grand Monarque of France’. He, as much as Reynolds, was an arbiter of the nation’s tastes. At a Royal Academy dinner, the Prince of Wales gratefully toasted this marketer of images ‘for the honour of the arts and in recompense of Mr Boydell’s zeal in their ...”

“... Such a sudden burst of martial fervour can only be described as a revanche, equivalent to those in France (1792-93), Prussia (1806-7), and Russia (1812) – a heightened mood combining elements of apocalyptic despair, epiphany, catharsis, but above all of mythmaking, as a result of which a large gap emerged between what this country actually did in the French ...”

“... the footstool and candelabra in the unfinished portrait of Madame Récamier when he was a pupil in David’s studio). The objects represented here can be traced from old inventories; indeed, an academic study exists devoted solely to Ingres’s eloquent mantelpieces. He shows not the slightest hint of embarrassment about the material expression of power ...”

“... Pilgrimage of Grace (1996) and The Defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace (1999), which he wrote with David Bownes. But to say that Hoyle shares with other historians what Bishop Sheppard of Liverpool called a bias, if not towards the poor then towards the people, a trendy bias, is not to say that he is wrong, or even that his history is prejudicial. On the ...”

“... are not variable confessions but different worlds, and different instruments of understanding. David Kepesh in The Dying Animal offers a strong sidelight on Roth in The Plot against America, a comic view of liberty and nation which darkens and widens in the new novel. Kepesh, divorced and determined never to make the mistake of marriage again, takes true ...”

“... on existentialism and phenomenology edited by R.D. Laing, complete with a eulogistic preface by David Cooper (the South African-born psychiatrist who coined the term ‘anti-psychiatry’). But readers who have to rely on an English translation have had to wait almost four decades to get their hands on a complete version. In important respects the new ...”

“... himself ‘entitled to seek out and obtain what he craved, instantly’. Kennedy said that David Cecil’s biography of Lord Melbourne, which depicted young aristocrats having a good time while performing heroic feats in the service of Queen and country, was one of his favourite books. When Kennedy was about to run for the Senate, according to ...”

“... man whose sole achievement lies in the sphere of the fanciful. Whereas in places like Germany and France people still tend to drop to their knees before sages with white beards.This is gross, but not different in substance from what Elizabeth Costello’s sister, a nun in Africa, tells her about the value of literature: ‘I do not need to consult novels to ...”

“... Israel, even among audiences that one would have expected to be far more critical – the left in France, the Italian Communist Party. Most important was the change within American Jewry, which became blindly, callously pro-Israel only after this war. Before 1967, Immanuel Wallerstein writes in the Hebrew journal Mita’am, ‘the Zionists presented the state ...”

“... to the flinty Wyeth’s credit, this overture was rebuffed.’ Nearer home, there was the case of David Sylvester, perhaps the leading British art critic of the second half of the 20th century. Hughes valued him as a friend and a fine analyst; he was also the best exhibition installer of his time. But he was a very slow writer with ‘an indurated ...”

“... told him: ‘They’re made up. But that doesn’t mean they’re not true.’ The grandfather, David Cartwright, aka the Old Bastard or OB for short, knows what he’s talking about, as he was the power behind the throne at the Park for decades. The grandson, River Cartwright, once a promising recruit at the Park, has just been relegated to a dead-end job ...”