“... Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, not the exhibition pictures of the Salon painters, that held sway. It wasn’t just a matter of size. If a picture is to be seen all the time, a degree of disengagement, an absence of overt emotion, will give it a better chance of holding its place. When Modernism of one kind or another suggested new ways of ...”

“... of the mutiny at Kanpur weighs in at nearly 700 pages; volumes by Christopher Hibbert and Saul David hover around 500.) Seen from certain perspectives, what had happened was a complete collapse of British security, authority and intelligence. The first real mutiny novel, Edward Money’s The Wife and the Ward (1859), captured this frank, demoralising view ...”

“... even married her Antony a good few times. The early stages of European portraiture began, the late David Piper suggested in his 1992 study, The English Face, with tomb-effigies in the 12th century. Neither beauty nor individuality were the point of these monuments in death to rank, wealth and piety. None of these portraits in stone looks like anyone I have ...”

“... whirlwind trip around European thought, with seven and a half pages on Hegel, one and a bit on David Hume and so on. The Monty Python ‘Summarise Proust’ contest, in which competitors had thirty seconds to deliver a précis, springs irresistibly to mind. Like the motion of desire itself, the book drives remorselessly from one author to another, raiding ...”

“... it was he who set off the massive explosion at the castle where his uncle and the duchess once held their secret meetings. By the end, this ironic chronicle of 19th-century heroism has taken us from the age of Romanticism through the onset of high capitalism to a Fin de Siècle of decadence and pointless terror. Until now, Boleslaw Prus has failed to make ...”

“... Dillon, and rushed back to Kennedy, who gave Dillon the job. Graham also recommended his friend David Bruce for Secretary of State, advice the President-elect didn’t take, choosing Dean Rusk instead. At Graham’s suggestion, Bruce became Ambassador in London, and before very long Graham was badgering Kennedy to sack Rusk and give the job to Bruce. Philip ...”

“... Melbourne spent two winters in Glasgow, living plainly and studying with John Millar, disciple of David Hume and Adam Smith, and one of the most influential proselytisers for the Scottish Enlightenment. This experience gave him a strong commitment to the principles of political economy; it also profoundly influenced his thinking on the relationship between ...”

“... in other words. He has been sentenced to death for an unspecified offence, and is currently held in a cell below the tide line. His cell fills up with seawater twice a day, leaving only a foot of air in which to breathe. His jailer, Pobjoy, brings him scraps of tattered parchment, on which he paints clichéd ‘scenes of bucolick bliss’. Pobjoy sells ...”

“... large’. It wasn’t just that Greenberg was quick to separate art into good and bad that Berger held against him, but also that he disdained anyone who disagreed with him. Greenberg himself took the view that he belonged to a relatively small group who could distinguish between good, mediocre and bad art, and dismissed people – like Rosenberg and Lawrence ...”

“... guaranteeing liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state. Such provisions are held partially to explain the peculiarly non-ideological tenor of American politics. From the outset, moreover, wannabe ‘Americans’ had come to the New World to escape the trammels of established churches and the hierarchical rigidities of feudalism which ...”

“... Woking – but the report candidly summarises their presumptions. ‘We have heard some strongly held views,’ the report states, ‘based in particular on reported first-hand experience by some campaigners and elected representatives, that electoral fraud is more likely to be committed by or in support of candidates standing for election in areas which are ...”

“... shall stand/With its unshaken head, till time’s last sand.’ This last phrase was borrowed by David Kynaston for the title of his captivating history of the bank.* The exit of the deputy governor remained unequalled for drama until the resignation of another deputy governor during the Barings crash three centuries later, after a Sunday tabloid reported ...”

“... and a quarter of those who voted Tory in 2019, thought the party deserved to lose every seat it held. Given a commanding majority in the last election and the opportunity to remake the country, the Conservatives squandered their final term in office, piling failure upon failure. Any twinge of pity is easily assuaged by recalling the vast waste and ...”

“... Daisy Hildyard, Colin Kidd, James Meek, Ferdinand Mount, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Parry, David RuncimanNeal Ascherson‘On​ 17 June poor France fell. That day, as we trudged past Greenwich … a tug skipper yelled gaily across the water: “Now we know where we are! No more bloody allies!”’ The writer A.P. Herbert recorded that. And it was ...”

“... mistress of General John Pershing and had helped break up the marriage of the British admiral Sir David Beattie. She was introduced to the glamorous young Superintendent. It was, in Perret’s view, a case of mutual and instantaneous lust. Others diagnosed the meshing of public images. The New York Times report of their wedding, on St Valentine’s Day ...”