“... to the world of everyday or in flight from it. But the problem with an objective mode is that it may seem neat, clever and unembarrassing without becoming in any way important: the most successfully individualised of character-sketches may end by being about nothing but itself. At least MacNeice’s hostility to the ...”

“... be required to respect hen roosts when he is hungry. The bombardment of a town is deplorable but may be necessary in order to enforce its surrender, though only the necessary minimum should be used. Despite these exceptions, the Enlightened 18th century did pretty well with the laws of war. Armies carried their commissariat train with them instead of living ...”

“... leader or the brutality of Simon de Montfort’s massacre of the London Jews.At first sight, it may seem unbalanced that Carpenter should cover 42 years of Henry’s reign in his first volume and only the last 14 years in his second. He explains this reasonably enough, on the grounds that the years after 1258 ‘are the more packed with incident, indeed ...”

“... been unaware of it as she passed between the households. The disturbing thought is that Susan may have felt she had to draw to be taken seriously as a patient. She brought to her analyst what she believed the analyst wanted. By 1950 she was arriving at each session with up to ninety drawings. And true to her method, Milner decided that the drawings ...”

“... administered the pledge to some penitents who were actually ‘in a state of intoxication’ and may well have been, as Samuel suggests, experiencing the fleeting regret of the very drunk rather than a lasting desire for reform. In Birmingham in 1863, a priest implored his flock to put in requests for sick calls before 10 a.m., ‘except in very urgent cases ...”

“... First World War. Freeman characterises it as ‘the great adventure’ of his life but the reader may disagree, having been so entertainingly and expertly led through the many other adventures that occupy the first two-thirds of the book. Perhaps Ede’s was not thought to be enough of a name to warrant the full biographical treatment without the more famous ...”

“... Todd and King speculate that the choice of subjects – religious men and courtly women – may have been dictated by the shared technical blueprint of the automata: each machine needs some sort of curtain, robe or dress to hide its internal mechanism and create the illusion.The mechanical monk does resemble Diego de Alcalá (or popular representations ...”

“... year North Korea tested its first nuclear device. Sanctions did little to prevent this; they may have had the opposite effect. But by exploiting foreign dependence on the dollar, the US government had shown that it too had a powerful new weapon. Economic blockades are not new. The Peloponnesian War was triggered by one in the fifth century BCE; the ...”

“... all other Kings, have ever been subject unto them, not only ever since my birth, but even as I may justly say, before my birth, and while I was yet in my Mother’s belly.’ It is no wonder that this clever boy grew up to be watchful, or that he thanked God for his miraculous deliverances and chose to shore up monarchy, or that he learned to dissemble and ...”

“... that might not have happened to a thousand Shaws, and a million Smiths. Perhaps our psychoanalysts may find in such dull stuff clues that have escaped me.’ Although he makes no mention of it, this is the fair but discouraging challenge that Arnold Silver has taken up. The ‘darker side’ alluded to by his title consists not, as Shaw himself might have ...”

“... of his manner, including its open political bias and its embarrassing shortage of examples. What may be more significant, Peter Widdowson has for some years edited a journal called Literature and History, which publishes scholarly articles, more dispassionately written and usually more fully documented, on specialist topics such as the historical references ...”

“... Philip Carteret Webb. The Jewish Naturalisation Act (the ‘Jew Bill’) was finally passed in May 1753, but during the general election of the following year it became a focus for City, High Church and Tory opposition. ‘Here, for the first time in English history,’ Dr Alderman writes, ‘the spectre was raised, and the possibility (however remote or ...”

“... a piece of land that will probably be built up in the future by developers. The slime and entropy may signify decay, but they are also the elements from which Bombay, and Mumbai, have been created and repeatedly redefined. ‘Artha’ protracts this exploration into crime, real estate, and, in this case, communal tension and violence. The story begins by ...”

“... Hercules dropping the pine-tree he’s just uprooted when he’s told that Hylas is gone – magic may lend grandeur to realism, but fantasy gains nothing from being made too real. On the other hand, the scenes on Olympus work well: Athena and Hera pay a visit to Aphrodite to ask her to make Medea fall in love. She is sitting on her verandah; she calls them in ...”

“... after the event. We know it only from the way it acts as a drag on our discourse, as astronomers may identify a heavenly body only because of its warping effect on the space around it. For the Real to take on tangible embodiment, to crop up in the shape of voices or visions, is for us to become psychotic. The Real is the McGuffin, the joker in the pack, the ...”