“... whom this vast infrastructure has (at least ostensibly) been erected. It is a historiography, as David Ingleby wittily put it, ‘like the histories of colonial wars’: it tells ‘us more about the relations between the imperial powers than about the “third world” of the mental patients themselves’. For this reason, among many others, Elaine ...”

“... As General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, prepares to report to Congress on 15 September on the success of George Bush’s ‘surge’, Bush himself is trying hard to talk it up and to discredit the policy of withdrawal. In a speech on 22 August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, he resorted to the new and risky strategy of using the example of the US withdrawal from Vietnam to support his position on Iraq ...”

“... we have to conclude that in many men and women this amounts to a definite choice. The choice may exist on an unconscious level, but nevertheless it is still there. Why some people but not others are obsessed with the survival of their species is a fascinating question. I would suggest that it may be that, in times like ...”

“... to paint, her paintings becoming ever more distilled and intense. She wrote in a letter: ‘I may never have anything to express, except this desire for a more interior life.’ In her work she showed no dependence on Rodin’s romantically charged, monumental style. Her paintings were usually very small, her focus narrow. She always knew what she ...”

“... Greek and Roman Rulers’.This in itself was not necessarily big news. The Swedish diplomat Johann David Åkerblad had already correctly deduced the signs for P and T in the hieroglyphic version of Ptolemy, suggesting that the lion stood for LO; the next, which looks like the front of a Eurostar train, for M; while in 1819 the British polymath Thomas Young ...”

“... too knowing or too perky among the native flora and fauna of his examples. Dennis Enright and David Rawlinson pass the test with flying colours, and their observations not only shed light on the topic but add their own quota of good things to the many they have selected. They are well aware of the possible drawbacks, and of the fact that friendship and ...”

“... career are the ones most likely to have been written about by previous writers. Mr Mackay may aim to restore unity to his study with his subtitle: ‘Intellectual Statesman’. Balfour was certainly intellectual and probably a statesman. But was he an ‘intellectual statesman’? If so, or indeed if not, what is an intellectual statesman? No clear ...”

“... to be processed”. I call those who accept this view of man and nature Turing’s men.’ David Bolter is a Classical scholar although he has a degree in computer science. He writes engagingly, encompassing the sweep of history right back to the Greeks. Computer technology is a curious combination of ancient and Western European technical ...”

“... candour, at least on so illustrious a level, it has lost none of its force. The application may be more subtle but the game’s the same. The disappearance of old cronies, even older brandies and cigars, has in no sense limited the scope for prime ministerial wiles. Indeed, the advent of television has led those set in authority over us to ever fresh ...”

“... its rebellions only contribute to a debased fulfilment of its ideology’s impossible goals; there may be something inherently Stalinist about the Russian people, the book comes close to suggesting. It is most unfortunate that his English publisher has chosen to issue an abridged version of The Madhouse which omits ‘some of the more serious sociological and ...”

“... would drag to hell A spirit from on high. Orphans can cast the evil eye on us; their bad luck may be communicable. But what Riley was primarily saying was then considered perfectly acceptable: the poor and unfortunate were put here by divine dispensation so that luckier people could acquire merit by exercising charity towards them. Such Victorian ...”

“... The inspector cautioned her. ‘There is nothing wrong in that,’ Lady Austin retorted. ‘You may think so, but it is what we call real love man for man. You call us Nancies and bum boys but . . . before long our cult will be allowed in this country.’ Lady Austin would have enjoyed Elton John’s ‘marriage’ to ...”

“... brain is essentially the same as in the old body (no strange hormonal rushes). Even so, there may be limits on how different one’s new body can be if one is to remain the same person. I may feel I’m most essentially a mental self, that my identity is in some deep way independent of my body, but ‘I am not merely ...”

“... last, Fait et à faire, last February. This was soon followed by The Castoriadis Reader, edited by David Ames Curtis, Castoriadis’s major expositor in the English-speaking world: a festschrift edited by Curtis appeared last May as an issue of the journal, Thesis Eleven, which has been a major platform for Castoriadis’s ...”

“... been made clear, still less where the money will come from to pay for the £7 billion in tax cuts David Cameron airily promised in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference last October. When such pledges are discussed in the media, it is usually in terms of whether they are funded or unfunded – whether the numbers ‘add up’. Osborne’s Autumn ...”