“... apocalyptic Westernists long to turn things around, to make their shattered world whole again. David Goodhart, the founding editor of Prospect, told the New York Times just before the general election that he believed Theresa May could dominate British politics for a generation. Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia and a regular contributor to the New York ...”

“... words were generated by the celebrated youngish American novelist, journalist and story-writer David Foster Wallace. Although willing to tilt at shiny targets of grammatical contention (the ending of sentences with prepositions etc), Wallace was, for the most part, hunting bigger game: America is in the midst of a protracted Crisis of Authority in matters ...”

“... Certainly he fell, received a visit from the dead monk and recovered, but as Elizabeth King and David Todd detail, the supposed origin of the machine is supported more by circumstantial evidence than positive proof; it’s an ‘elegant hypothesis’, the authors conclude. More interesting than the clockwork Diego’s uncertain provenance, however, is the ...”

“... from a review by the late Richard (‘l’étonnant’) Cobb of English historians of the French Revolution: ‘There must be some consolation for present holders of Regius Chairs and hope for future ones to discover just how bad, how indolent, how wrong-headed and how feeble some of their predecessors have been.’26 November 1997. To hear Gordon ...”

“... wasn’t until 30 May that the BBC told its audience there was ‘a battle now raging’ near the French coast, and that the Royal Navy had helped to evacuate troops who were ‘not immediately engaged’. Even during the four or five days of the operation that remained, there was almost no first-hand reporting. One freelance journalist, ...”

“... instruments. In King Kasaï (2023), an account of his overnight stay in the Africa Museum, the French journalist Christophe Boltanski reminds us that it was a wet, chilly summer. The women were given light cotton tops to cover their breasts while the men wore traditional dress. At night they slept next to the stables; by day they performed for eager crowds ...”

“... for burlesque, rather than for the tragic or pastoral mode of the works by Ingres and Manet and David which he takes as his sources. A visit to the Hôtel Salé in the Marais where the Musée Picasso opened a year ago is as exhilarating and depressing as a trip to the Royal Academy exhibition. Here, too, there are masterpieces from the artist’s own ...”

“... from Jewish communities behind the Iron Curtain and in Algeria with the Americans and the French. Dual loyalty, it emerges, is something of an Israeli speciality. As one anti-Communist supporter of David Ben-Gurion put it, in a reference to leftist immigrants from the Soviet Union: ‘In our relations with the USA ...”

“... if controversial’, although, as I see it, justice could be done to them only by a writer like David Lodge or Malcolm Bradbury. It seems evident to me that their work is for the most part based on a very small element of truth whose significance is inflated out of all proportion, that facts buttressing the case are carefully selected, and all the evidence ...”

“... make the passage thoroughly European – nothing would be lost by turning it into English or French or German. If one were to choose a page of Hebrew prose from one of the new Israeli novelists such as Meir Shalev and David Grossman, however, one would be more likely to encounter dense constellations of ...”

“... booby, the flightless rail and the giant tortoise might live happily ever after. The Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft project, which had the robust backing of Denis Healey as Secretary of State for Defence, was grounded after a sustained campaign by the tireless Scot. Again, he helped to defeat James Callaghan’s legislation designed to provide ...”

“... explain: ‘May appears to be educating Georgie,’ said a member of the family. She could speak French and German and had studied constitutional history. None of this made for an exciting court. Surprisingly, there is no mention of that mischievous ‘Ballade à Double Refrain’ (in which courtiers debate whether the King is duller than the Queen, or vice ...”

“... It was ten hours before Lindbergh crossed Newfoundland, 33 hours before he landed in Paris. The French President decorated him; King George V received him at Buckingham Palace; President Coolidge sent a cruiser and an admiral to bring him home. In Chesapeake Bay, Mr Kennedy tells us, the cruiser was met by four destroyers, two army dirigibles and a fly-past ...”

“... in general showed little interest in the discoveries. The contempt for history of the French intellectuals of the time is often exaggerated; we cannot reproach Voltaire or Montesquieu with being unhistorical. But though they had regard for ‘antiquity’, they had none for ‘antiquities’, which they despised. Montesquieu remarked that all ...”

“... Geoffrey Leech, Jennifer Coates, F.R. Palmer, R.A. Close, John Sinclair, Jan Firbas, Nils Enkvist, David Crystal, Jan Svartvik, Wolf-Dietrich Bald, Nelson Francis, Morton Bloomfield, E.L. Epstein, John Lyons, Archibald Hill, James Sledd, R.I. McDavid Jr, R.K. O’Cain, Linda Barnes, Josef Vachck and Barbara Strang. So varied as well as distinguished a ...”