“... or the revelations of his doctor. Biographers have always had a difficult time with Chiang, which may explain why there have been so few of them; Madame Chiang was always much better copy, as we were reminded in her obituaries last year. Early pictures of Chiang at Dr Sun’s side, and as commander of the Whampoa military academy where he built the ...”

“... is hiding in the school. His identity papers are forged, and deportation to the death camps may await him if he is caught. His attention, however, is not on the dangers outside but on a mathematics lesson. When he first started taking the classes, ‘he sat uncomprehending before the meaningless words and numbers on the blackboard.’ Today, though, a ...”

“... to Bathe Your New Baby’ v. ‘Win the Chance to Pole-Dance with Pamela!’ – it may be time to consider whether these men’s magazines aren’t just the latest enlargement on the old fantasy of men having everything they want to have and finding a way to call it their destiny. Stag & Groom Magazine is edited by a woman who has no end of ...”

“... sake the choice of assumed name should be arbitrary and inscrutable. In some cases, there may be the good reason that the author has something important to lose if he’s recognised. Patrick Mann’s novels (Steal Big, Dog Day Afternoon) carry the front-cover information that ‘Patrick Mann is the pseudonym of a former US Army Intelligence agent who ...”

“... or when wrapped in a European reputation, such as Garbo’s or Dietrich’s. Citizen Kane may not have been the first film to break through this cloying curtain of snobbery, self-satisfaction and ignorant parochialism, but never had an American movie so brashly demonstrated that Hollywood could now no longer be a dirty word. Here at last was the ...”

“... The welfare state became the warfare state – an outcome Roosevelt neither foresaw nor desired. Robert Dallek is troubled by the absence of leadership in contemporary American politics, and his biography of FDR is meant to show us what the real thing looks like. ‘In this time of demoralisation,’ he writes, ‘it seems well to remind Americans that the ...”

“... and forming the Moon from the debris produced by the impact. Collisions between large bodies may also be responsible for altering the rotation of Venus, which takes longer to spin on its axis than it does to orbit the Sun and hence has a day longer than its year; for the surprising density of Mercury, which may once ...”

“... doesn’t, even though an obvious reason for wanting to gag people is the fear that not doing so may cause harm? Clearly, the prospect of such harm can be exploited to squelch opinions one doesn’t care to hear. But the fact that some people cite harm disingenuously doesn’t show that the preponderance of harm arises from a regime of gagging rather than ...”

“... 1945 – the Cold War standing in this case as both analogy and warning. In Return to Cold War, Robert Legvold – a specialist in post-Soviet foreign policy and regular contributor to Foreign Affairs – sees worrying similarities between the current situation and the early stages of the Cold War (c.1948-53), focusing in particular on the rhetorical ...”

“... wife, on his motive for travel, on his financial state, his dealings with Garrick, or whatever it may be – there is inevitably a tiny query hovering over the fictions which Sterne devised to cope with such issues. It is the biographer’s job to fix the fleeting, to freeze the volatile gases of personality; the better he is (Cash is pretty good, in this ...”

“... or resignation of our judgments upon the testimony of any Age or Author whatsoever’; and Robert Boyle ruled that it was ‘improper’ to ‘urge and rely on Testimonys for matters whose Truth or Falshood may be proved by manifest Reason or easy Experiment’. As Steven Shapin observes in his subtle and learned ...”

“... Ireland – if he did point one out. Far from merely straggling in the wake of a very large field, Robert Kee and Frank Callanan restore freshness to the scent by showing how much can still be quarried from close attention to Parnell’s career, not least to the press, which not only made and unmade his reputation but, alongside Hansard, supplied him with the ...”

“... Winstanley and Harrington, but I found his chapters on lesser writers even more instructive. Robert Burton and Samuel Gott are revealed as more significant ‘utopians’ than has been recognised. Dr Davis is also interesting on William Sprigge’s A Modest Plea for an Equal Commonwealth of 1659, the anonymous Chaos (1659) and The Free State of Noland ...”

“... his critical appreciations of modern French writers. The first man he meets is a young painter, Robert Canyot, a traditionalist who thinks Richard far too modern. Richard wins Robert’s girlfriend, Nelly Moreton, although Richard fears she is too young for him: they have much in common, Richard and Nelly, both being ...”

“... plainly, and directly against the essence of a Common-wealth … That the sovereign power may be divided. For what is it to divide the Power of a Common-wealth but to Dissolve it? For Powers divided mutually destroy each other.’ In what Hobbes called ‘a mixt monarchy’, where the power of levying money depended on a general assembly, the power ...”