“... rhythm, deep-rooted metaphorical structurings of social experience and sexual relations. On a broad definition of the word, all these things are political; on a narrow definition, politics is a matter of mere ephemeral externals, irrelevant to the world of culture and imagination. These two opposing conceptions of the political have been pulling further ...”

“... other starting-points are called for.The literature concerning the welfare state falls into three broad categories. Some analysts regard the welfare state’s growth as the main cause of many contemporary political troubles. Most often associated with the apocalyptic Right, those who espouse this belief focus on ways of restraining the overreaching state and ...”

“... Thus the best story in the collection, ‘Tomb with a View’ (Theroux is not averse to a broad jest now and then), opens with routine office business: Mrs Fleamarsh had come in a few days before. Her husband had complained of chest pains on the train to Salisbury, missed the cathedral, collapsed on the bus, and died at Stonehenge. She insisted on ...”

“... to standing up and knocking down – is in part responsible for his widespread neglect. Even so broad-minded and widely-read a philosopher as Arthur Danto has said that he finds Dewey’s work without interest, because lacking in ‘structure’. Ayer found (and, I imagine, Williams finds) in Dewey only a rubbery amorphous mass of neologisms (‘problematic ...”

“... a different story. They include a letter of 1829 by Charles Lamb, in which he speaks of ‘true broad Hogarthian fun’, and an essay by Carlyle of 1837: ‘There is nothing more Hogarthian comic.’ Next comes Swinburne, fifty years later, speaking of ‘an excellent Hogarthian comedy, full of rapid and vivid incident, of pleasant or indignant ...”

“... and music patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the guardian angel of Mozart’s late style. Richard Taruskin accuses Stravinsky of lying about the original idea of The Rite of Spring, which was visual and frankly ‘Scriabinistic’ rather than purely musical. In various autobiographical statements Stravinsky dismissed the help of Nicholas Roerich in ...”

“... didn’t lack a capacity for big vision. But he was also keen on details, with no time for broad-brush talk about the seven ages of man. He was 47 – still in Jaques’s fifth age (‘And then the justice … with eyes severe’) – when he died in 1794, in the fancy Calcutta suburb of Garden Reach. Two decades earlier he had drawn up a more ...”

“... to Roman Catholicism’ – this was an Irish Anglican – ‘turned his path back towards the Broad Church.’ Hankins carefully charts these private movements of the spirit, which are really much more interesting than Hamilton’s professional involvement in the controversy over the wave nature of light. The political turmoil of Ireland touched him ...”

“... of the 1650s together. But the people whom he (inelegantly) calls ‘the apocalyptics’ are a broad church. So are his republicans, including as they do Oliver Cromwell (who, though against Charles I, was not against kingship) and his cousin and ally Oliver St John. In 1651, these men are to be found arguing for the restoration of some form of monarchy ...”

“... machines except perhaps a two-wheeled walking tractor-tiller: otherwise it was all old-fashioned broad-forks, wheel-hoes and good sharp knives, with a few ducks for slug control and some low-tech greenhouses and root cellars to keep you going through the winter (diagrams provided). This was what I wanted! Instead of being forever at the mercy of ...”

“... over the last sixty years than the Falkland Islands, Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia and broad swathes of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. No one expected this, and no one – except the North Korean government itself – believed the DPRK would survive into the second decade of the 21st century. Two things made this possible: China and ...”

“... attacking Pakistan, and his fight against the US and Nato enjoys the support of the army and of broad sections of the Pakistani public. The same courtesy has been extended to Mullah Omar, whose headquarters are in Quetta, where he’s reportedly sheltered by the ISI. ‘They are our people; they’re not our enemies,’ one ISI officer says. So what does it ...”

“... to do now than it was for Clark and his authors, who, Roberts says, shared with their readers ‘a broad sense of the purpose and direction’ of the volumes in his History. I should think that their purpose, then as now, was to help undergraduates to write essays and pass exams. If the present History becomes superannuated before it is finished it is more ...”

“... but developed its own distinct identity as a province of its empire.’ Virgil would be delighted. Richard Hingley’s book deals with the troublesome process of uncovering Roman Britain. This is difficult territory. He explores how, between 1586 (the date of William Camden’s Britannia) and 1906 (when Francis Haverfield’s lecture on ‘The Romanisation of ...”

“... Plenty, 2010). He has also published Unapologetic (2012), an Anglican riposte to the likes of Richard Dawkins that’s subtitled ‘Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense.’ Backroom Boys is billed as a ‘love letter to quiet men in pullovers’, and Spufford often seems to focus on socially or technically ...”