“... in the 17th century, ‘the status of painting as the most prestigious and costly art was by no means universally accepted,’ he writes, noting that a set of jewel-encrusted liturgical objects in Cardinal Richelieu’s collection was appraised more highly than any of their owner’s paintings, which included Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with Saint ...”

“... life as in art. Our vogue for honesty in such matters, an honesty we now take wholly for granted, means that Wright as critic assumes that Hartley would have been all the better – and bigger – a writer had he early and fearlessly disclosed his case, and explored it fully and powerfully in his fiction. But this must be all wrong; and not only for a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... by suitably deferential courtiers wearing gold pins in the shape of bamboo – ‘Milasi’ means ‘bamboo’. Mdala believed that the British would not buy his plan unless it was backed up by stacks of historical evidence proving the legitimacy of the Milasi and their age-old right to rule. In fact the British were as opportunistic as the Yao and ...”

“... by Pope Sixtus IV’s nephew Raffaele Riario, a cardinal. As Martines shows, churches were by no means off-limits as locations for murder: the slaying of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral might have passed almost without notice in Italy. Indeed, the Pazzi chose as their signal to act the moment when Cardinal Riario elevated the Host: that is, the ...”

“... at their heels and those threatened by the Greens. Solidifying conditional Labour support usually means adopting regressive social stances, but work by YouGov suggests that 12 per cent of Labour’s vote is ‘naturally’ – that is, under a system without tactical voting – Green. A party tempted to give up on its climate commitments ought to keep that ...”

“... must rule on ‘how’ a person came by their death, the word ‘how’ in fact meant ‘by what means and in what circumstances’, and so it was appropriate to go into the details of what had happened and in particular to look at any official dereliction of duty that might be thought to have been causative. No doubt their lordships were much influenced by ...”

“... schools, transformed the structure of the profession, making the knight’s move a normal means of advancement. Instead of history being a job for life, or, to put it more grandly, a vocation, it became a mere stage in the teacher’s career, leading to more indeterminate, but influential positions such as year leader, course co-ordinator, head of ...”

“... the sense is that the detainees are also being punished for being women. This reality is by no means specific to the UK. In July, the New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the object of sexually explicit social media posts by border guards after she described the horrifying conditions in US border detention centres: detainees had reported ...”

“... no scrutiny’. Before ending the supply of food and water to the miners and removing their means of exit, the police had, it seems, failed to make certain that they had a way to get back to the surface.Like thousands of South African mine shafts, these three shafts were closed by the companies that owned them when they stopped being profitable. They ...”

“... supporting a distinctive race or community, is restricted’ [emphasis added] – which actually means that it is forbidden, because there are no provisions for exceptions. That still left in place pre-existing foundations, allowing a dwindling number of Armenian and Greek churches as well as synagogues and schools to keep going, but in 1974 new legislation ...”

“... are life-enhancing or give pleasure, but that they are a test of the health of a society. Bad art means bad lives are being lived. Good policies will be known by the art they encourage. The works C.R. Ashbee is remembered for – a couple of original if slightly awkward houses in Chelsea, some pretty silver and jewellery of an almost Art Nouveau ...”

“... sentenced 13 of them to death. The ‘boss’, a powerful Indonesian Chinese businessman known as David Wong, was arrested in Indonesia and sent to prison for six years. Wong is by no means the only boss. Sony Wei, the leader of the pirates who hijacked the Chang Sheng, spoke, in the course of his testimony, of working for ...”

“... adequate to the mass annihilation seems to fail. Every effort to stabilise recollection by means of language comes too late – too late for those who were its victims, too late for the event itself.’ How does one stabilise such a recollection? Even today, fifty years later, the historians’ question can hardly be separated from the travails of the ...”

“... education legislation last year, ‘If challenging the allegedly oppressive liberal cultural elite means insisting on climate change sceptics being appointed to senior academic positions regardless of their attitudes to evidence and reasoned debate, then our universities and their reputation are, indeed, at risk.’ Quite. The university isn’t, and ...”