“... and citizens of the Republic of Letters. A century later, neither the church nor classics held much sway over scientific debate. Marine fossils found in the stones of the pyramids could no longer be explained away as remnants of the Flood; they were monuments of geological time that extended far beyond the records of ancient civilisations. The French ...”

“... memories of living together were being effaced, and the fabric of social life, which had held Muslims, Croats and Serbs together, was being torn apart. At no point in the trial did any of the witnesses articulate such a panoramic point of view, though one can feel the judges searching for it when they hold a witness briefly at the end of his ...”

“... controversy by whose lurid light his subsequent work was prejudged and has been judged ever since. David Womersley – now Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford – stands at the head of those scholars who try to situate Gibbon in his 18th-century context, thus raising and trying to answer many questions, of which that just framed is central to the ...”

“... the Black Dwarf.’ We had a vote, and everyone was in favour, which was rare – I think even David Mercer, who was the most grumpy attendant at these meetings. So that’s how it happened, and we raised money for a broadsheet, the first broadsheet on Mayday 1968, and people poured in with offers of help. When I think back on it, it was quite ...”

“... of a solution, by fleshing out the original makers of the myth – Joe and Rose Kennedy. David Nasaw’s The Patriarch is a comprehensive account of Joseph Kennedy’s ascent from lace-curtain respectability to extraordinary wealth and political influence, followed by exile to the margins and vicarious achievement through his sons. Nasaw shows that ...”

“... who had by then returned to office as foreign secretary in the wartime coalition government led by David Lloyd George. The British government would ‘view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object’. Although there was realpolitik behind ...”

“... this time stole the surname of a classmate – formed a two-tone band called the Executive with David Austin (who would become a lifelong collaborator) and Ridgeley’s brother Paul. Michael was lead vocalist but hadn’t yet found the right style: his attempts at a Jamaican accent fell flat. A fifth member, Andrew Leaver, directed homophobic slurs at James ...”

“... of life now reigns in the thinking stratum of Chinese society, especially among the young. David Rice’s Dragon’s Brood is a marvellously fresh and immediate evocation of this confusion at what one might call the first level of perception – that of the serious visit. Rice is innocent of any real knowledge of Chinese culture or Chinese history, and ...”

“... of which Deborah Cadbury’s is the latest, two versions of Wallis have emerged. One, widely held at the time, argues that she was an ambitious, selfish woman who was intent on being queen and spent the rest of her life punishing the hapless duke for her disappointment. The other, a minority view though strongly ...”

“... familiarly, and not affectionately, known – has exerted true staying power. Despite not having held elective office in two decades or making any useful contribution to the commonweal as a citizen, Giuliani has managed to remain a political burlesque act, clinging to the slim consolation that tawdry fame is better than no fame at all.The contrast between ...”

“... Sovietology was dominated by the ‘totalitarian hypothesis’ In its strong form, this held that a monolithic party-state ruled omnipotently over a passive, frozen society: in its very different weaker form, the party-state merely sought to achieve omnipotence. Both the advocates and the critics of the totalitarian hypothesis frequently muddied the ...”

“... editor to recognise, in 1793, that at this point another break in the metre marks a dramatically held pause. ‘How?’ asks Agamemnon. ‘Ay’ is Aeneas’s unruffled, insolent reply – which he then allows to sink in, before continuing his suave provocation in a return to courtly blank verse: I ask, that I might waken reverence And bid the check be ...”

“... parliament. It also has the right to veto any article in the new constitution that is held to violate the revolution’s goals. The presidency meanwhile has been stripped of many of its powers, including the power to declare war. This wasn’t a military coup, as some claimed: the coup had already taken place on 11 February 2011, when the SCAF ...”

“... the sensation of sandpaper, the heat of it after it was rubbed on wood and its roughness when I held it to my face.When he finished the model, my father took it to Rabbies, a restaurant he co-owned on Burns Statue Square in Ayr, which served steak with tomatoes cut into Little Red Riding Hood baskets. A copy of the Selkirk Grace hung on one wall and a glass ...”

“... 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 ...”