“... confronted in the 19th century remain [oh dear ...] those of the 20th century ... Thoughtful men may reject the cures he recommended, but we ignore his diagnosis at our peril.’ The essay itself, the most interesting of the four, describes and assesses three kinds of history: the ‘monumental’ or heroic, the antiquarian and the critical. The main butts ...”

“... Ideas’, but there is one inheritance which they especially enjoyed, and which we may be especially glad of: a ferocious eloquence, a virtuoso capacity for charged denunciation and for the vivid expression of a taste for life. Henry Junior, perhaps because he was the placid mother’s favourite, seems to me to have most successfully worked to ...”

“... None of the Chilean intellectuals I spoke to had a good word to say about Pinochet, though a few may have supported, at least tacitly, the idea of military intervention as a means to restore a workable democracy. What divides them is not their attitude to Pinochet, but their attitude to Allende. In this regard, I suspect, those who remained in Chile are by ...”

“... was that Egypt would not be ready for war at least until the end of 1970. During the crisis of May 1967, the intelligence chiefs completely misread the meaning of the Egyptian and Jordanian moves. The draft of the 1967 annual intelligence evaluation, prepared in May, explicitly stated that there was no chance that war ...”

“... for the narrator’s habitual academic delivery, one baulks at this stilted sentence: ‘You may be ever so much of a gentleman and a privy councillor, but if you have a daughter you cannot be secure of immunity [my italics] from that petty bourgeois atmosphere...’ This is exceptional and no worse than Hingley’s maladroit update in ...”

“... to describe how institutions work, he can expose the limitations of the revealing anecdote. On 25 May 1811, while Catholic Relief was debated in the House of Commons, every Irish member present was (it seems) intoxicated. It’s not clear why we learn this, rather than anything of the debate, or of what led up to it, or of the franchise more generally. Even ...”

“... photographers at her showings on purpose to promote copying and permit ‘stealing’. Chanel may have been an insecure person, with her steady need to boast about her professional importance and her personal superiority, and her automatic habit of disparaging the achievements of others and the taste of their clients: and yet it worked. Some of it was a ...”

“... peace initiative was launched by the Israeli Government prior to Shamir’s visit to Washington in May 1989. The Government offered to hold free municipal elections on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to allow the inhabitants a greater measure of autonomy in the running of their daily affairs. The offer was hedged around by restrictions. It did not extend ...”

“... Nashe. In 1599 the bishops had ordered ‘that all Nashe’s books ... be taken wheresoever they may be found and that none of [his] books be ever printed hereafter.’ Within two years, having been prohibited from earning his living as a writer, Nashe had died, in extreme poverty. In Middleton’s fable, the Nightingale, who is herself a poet, laments to ...”

“... set adrift from the respectability of marriage and driven to fight her battles in public. Besant may well have felt attracted to Bradlaugh and Stead, but what she most needed from men was companionship in the pursuit of moral ideals. Certainly, her life had a richly quirky and wilful side. But was it any more quirky than those of her male contemporaries ...”

“... which ‘lent themselves to presentation in apocalyptic terms’. Disenchantment may be part of this story; but it does not provide a sociologically satisfying explanation. It places too much emphasis on the intellectual minority who articulate the new religiosity without explaining why they have become so influential. Martin Riesebrodt opts ...”

“... Kissinger himself escapes very lightly. That brings us back to ‘globalism’. Whatever may be thought of Kissinger’s lack of scruple and judgment, his conceit and treachery to colleagues, nobody has thought him a fool. Yet he probably did more than any other man to block a comprehensive settlement both before and after the 1973 war. Nixon’s ...”

“... to me historically false. It can be true – though one community’s conception of moral unity may well not be another’s – but frequently is not. The Report has to argue this, of course, because it is trying to assimilate two differing traditions – both to be found on the British left. One is the commitment to social justice as a principle; the other ...”

“... landed gentry, the element in the Party which she later came most powerfully to despise. She may not have inherited a private income, but she married an alternative to it. Financially she belonged to the leisured classes.’ It is entirely characteristic that her memoirs make no mention of this awkward fact. Instead, we get class-conscious denunciations ...”

“... the 1989 fighting has led their enemies to say they were ‘secret Inkatha’ all along. This may be true – but the logic of polarisation is far stronger than loyalty to any cause. Shabalala then boldly headed an Inkatha march through Bhambayi. It was, inevitably, hand-grenaded and shot at, leaving eight dead. Shabalala led his followers in Christian ...”