“... and also in bringing within a single argument Ossian, Stukeley’s Stonehenge, the Druids, Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg), radical antiquarians such as Douce and Ritson, and several forms of primitivism. The chapter on mythography does not succeed quite so well. It concerns a problem which has preoccupied Blake scholars for many years: given Blake’s ...”

“... Layard’, as he is affectionately termed in one of Auden’s early poems – is said to have told a submarine officer that he had grown a beard as a masculine protest against the mechanical womb he inhabited. And in Portrait of the Artist a young man informs his friend that he admires, the Venus de Milo because her broad hips show she would ...”

“... political community’. And if there is any principle on which the international community can be said to agree, it is that intervention, so defined, is legally and morally illegitimate. Every nation, no matter what its size or power, is entitled to internal sovereignty. All states have an obligation to refrain from violating the sovereignty of others. It is ...”

“... time, the less love is to be found in the family, and the more brutal the treatment of children. Edward Shorter’s The Making of the Modern Family (1975), now read in many European countries, defiantly announced that mothers have not always loved their offspring. Lawrence Stone, whose book Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977) prints some ...”

“... family annuities expired. He so inhabited his dour poetic persona that his friend and publisher Edward Hookham, writing to the Literary Fund, ‘had but too just reason to dread that the Fate of Chatterton might be that of Peacock’. The committee awarded him £30. Numerous failed courtships intensified the gloom. Peacock was, his cousin remembered, ‘a ...”

“... his career in the service of the Marathas, and sired numerous part-Indian children by (it was said) 16 wives and mistresses. In a small yard outside the church, members of his multi-ethnic clan lie buried. Some of their tombs have crosses on top and epitaphs on the side in Persian – memorials to a period in Anglo-Indian history when European and Eastern ...”

“... late 1930s, leading into the era of the Manhattan project and Hiroshima. Is there much more to be said, now, about that dramatic course of events? There is a suggestion that if Truman had been told about the lingering horrors of radioactivity he might have decided against dropping the bombs on Japan, but that is sheer conjecture. In any case, the military ...”

“... tampering with manuscripts). The men of this new age were scholars, working in a tradition often said to have originated with Malone and achieving, in the 20th century, an extraordinary degree of refinement. They were pioneers, but were too easily excited, and enjoyed too much liberty. As collectors they were prone, as a contemporary put it, to experience ...”

“... well expressed by Patrick Kavanagh, a friend of his from wartime Dublin: Give us another poem, he said Or they will think your muse is dead; Another middle-aged departure Of Apollo from the trade of archer. In January 1960 Evelyn Waugh declared that he and Betjeman, along with Elizabeth Bowen and L.P. Hartley, had lost their edge as writers. In these often ...”

“... his SDP adventure, and his Presidency of the European Commission – none of which can be said to illuminate the main story in any significant way. Both are anxious to establish Churchill’s ‘greatness’. Best incorporates the word into his subtitle; Jenkins finishes his book – rather feebly, in view of all the much more interesting points that ...”

“... employed in, say, Keele, or Leeds, this might never have happened. So there is something to be said after all for the location of the University of Cambridge, which, as its denizens tend to complain, is a dank sort of fenny place with nothing to protect it from the chill winds of Siberia but the low hills of the Urals. Some thought that Duffy’s great ...”

“... workers. Its publication made him a household name at the age of 27. Meat consumption in the US is said to have dipped for several years after the novel appeared. Some of its influence can be attributed to the backing of President Roosevelt (‘the greatest publicity man of that time’, according to Sinclair), who sent the young author a three-page analysis ...”

“... confused. The vast majority reported being ‘unsure’ about the vaccine’s safety; two-thirds said they were no longer sure of its effectiveness. Something similar happened in Japan in 2014. In response to scientifically unfounded concerns raised by mothers’ groups, the government downgraded its HPV vaccination policy from ‘proactive’ to ...”

“... marry in 1863. Years later, when he tried to explain his decision to marry Susan Pollexfen, Yeats said that her family genius ‘for being dismal’ was, he felt, what he needed. ‘Indeed it was because of this I took to them and married my wife. I thought I would place myself under prison rule and learn all the virtues.’ After Trinity, Yeats studied to ...”

“... cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted ...”