“... rather like reports from less-than-overwhelmed referees. Asa Briggs is dismissed in a few lines; David Landes is damned with the faint praise of ‘considerable literary skills and a certain old-fashioned rhetoric’; and Lord Dacre is rapped on the knuckles for failing to write a big book on the Enlightenment. Such comments are more revealing of their ...”

“... aside from the anachronistic nature of such terms, it is difficult to see how the diverse views held on diverse topics by such men could be so neatly summarised. As it happens, all five were proud to call themselves Whigs: but on topics political, theological and liturgical their differences defy simple classification. Spadafora’s book is both scholarly ...”

“... and other sources. The book focuses on the three sets of bilateral negotiations that Israel held between 1949 and 1952 with Syria, Jordan and Egypt respectively. The title of the book, like the poem by Robert Frost which inspired it, is rather ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. Rabinovich declines to identify those who decided not to take the road ...”

“... signs in English were to be allowed. In recent years the percentage of Francophones in Québec has held firm and even crept up a bit, to 83 per cent. But this stabilisation is not the result of the mass conversion of Anglo or allophones to French. The weakness in Laurin’s theory is that non-Francophones are free to move on to another province, or perhaps to ...”

“... the wooden pallets – when we notice that the lorries behind us are idling. One wagon has been held up because of a query over waybills. The rest of us cannot move on until it has caught up. A straggling truck could be prey to pirate runabouts. There is nothing to do except inhale the smell of rotting fruit. Technicals sweep past us to interdict traffic ...”

“... mistakes. Which is how I came to spend a rather chilly day on a hill north of Sarajevo watching David, with one hand tied behind his back, tackling Goliath. Having learnt that they cannot rely on the UN to save them, the Bosnian Army were answering back, attacking an advanced Serbian position on the ridge of a hill. They were using an old Russian 70 mm ...”

“... of them became Anglican, but this seems an exaggeration. And some, while remaining in the Society, held aristocratic values and pursued an aristocratic life-style. At any rate that is the impression one gets from dipping into the Journal (1835-44) of Barclay Fox, which reveals exactly the kind of self-confident, debonair, but caring personality that ...”

“... of them. His idea of participation was to appear, but to appear detached. The formula caught and held a whole imitative school of lycanthropic scribblers, who could mock and jeer at the antics of the period without being so square as to be left out of the party altogether. The summit of this style – its glass of fashion and its mould of form – was ...”

“... my heart.’ Often, however, her formality couldn’t be improved upon – for example, to David Garnett: ‘I was grateful to you for your letter after Valentine’s death, for you were the sole person who said that for pain and loneliness there is no cure.’ It enabled her to deal with publishers, and, most difficult of all, to give away money ...”

“... in which Uriah Heep – ‘looking flabby and lead-coloured in the moonlight’ – explains to David Copperfield the experiences that showed him the value of being ’umble. ‘Dickens was a great connoisseur of hypocrisy,’ she writes, ‘yet he was not obsessive about it ... Why has his sense of humanity been so rare? Why are people so overwhelmed by ...”

“... the miscarriage of justice inflicted by the British legal system on the Birmingham Six. Lord Lane held in their 1988 appeal that ‘the longer this hearing has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict was correct.’ The US Court of Appeals seems to have accepted the prosecution case wholesale, convinced itself a priori of the ...”

“... interest, and in an instant subordinates the lot to a single popular demand. It’s doubtful that David Cameron ever thought this far ahead, but in his passion for referendums (four were held during his premiership) he was testing parliamentary sovereignty to breaking point. Under these circumstances, political hegemony is ...”

“... for introducing the Viennese public to the music of Handel and J.S. Bach, and for a time held salons every Sunday (which Mozart attended) dedicated to the performance of Bach’s works, because he was fascinated by counterpoint. Liebhaber took a more ‘recreational’ view: they might get together to play a piano trio, or enjoy hearing a cassation ...”

“... instincts or libido shared with animals, are put first’. Always? Despised? The elders of Troy held Helen holy for obeying her libido. Respect for reason occupies a very tiny area in human history. In culture upon culture and empire after empire the prized capacities have been for reading portents in bird flight or shooting stars, discerning prophecies in ...”

“... cruelty of the elements. It comes with a recommendation by Graham Greene who says: ‘The story held me so completely ... I wish I had written this book.’ At first, this is a little surprising – for the adultery that triggers off the action is an ordinary American adultery, without sacrilegious or metaphysical overtones, and the central conflict is near ...”