“... instance, J.N.L. Myres in 1986: ‘No figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time.’ In his new book, Nicholas Higham cites neither opinion but certainly knows of them, and indeed, in the end, agrees with them (except about book titles). Still, whatever historians may say, legends of King Arthur have remained ...”

“... examples attest to what the art historian David Freedberg calls ‘the power of images’, which more puritanical critics might see as fetishism writ large. ‘To be adored or punished, to be welcomed, dreaded, or expelled,’ Heller-Roazen concludes, ‘the image of the absentee is each time “wanted”, after the manner of its wanting subject. The fragile ...”

“... In​ The World Is Flat, published in 2005, Thomas Friedman argued that global trade and finance, presided over by international institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO – were making the planet not only richer but less hierarchical and unequal. This was a pumped-up version of the Enlightenment theory of doux commerce, which held that growing trade, founded on mutually beneficial contracts and the rule of law, would provide opportunity and riches for all, and eventually consign wars, empires and great-power politics to the past ...”

“... of ‘Julia, Daughter of Claudius’. ‘I did it for a joke,’ she told the Daily Mail. A few more poems followed, and then, as she hit her stride, a Stakhanovite eight works of fiction in eight years. In October 1940, a bomb demolished the room of her own, and Trevelyan died a few months later at her parents’ house in Bath. ‘Never Recovered from ...”

“... usually decisive, are now tried summarily before the stipendiary magistrates. Few cases have been more important in the history of jury rights than what is known as Bushel’s Case (1670). This is the case of the Quakers, Penn and Mead, indicted at the Old Bailey in that they did preach and speak to persons in the street assembled, by reason whereof a great ...”

“... medium; for example, to capture the mobility of bourgeois types on the town, the sketch might be more useful than other means (the exemplar in the essay is not the great Manet but Constantin Guys, who was then known for his quick studies). What better vehicle to convey ‘the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent’ – key qualities of the metropolitan ...”

“... Material Place – ‘All men say “What” to me,’ Emily Dickinson wrote in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson. She certainly mystified Higginson. He never entirely overcame his uneasiness about her odd, disjunctive words and bewildering epistolary tones and seven years into their correspondence still complained of being unable to get beyond the ...”

“... for the established place of Roman history in contemporary English-speaking culture and (even more) education. Books on familiar subjects continue to be written, and to find publishers and – presumably – readers. One of the five, indeed, is offered with the sole justification – outdated by the time the book appeared – that no biography of Pompey ...”

“... through domesticated rape; and grudging, conniving admiration for an unscrupulous New Woman, a more cosmetic version of the pushy dames lampooned by Thurber, and a preview of the ruthless, raunchy Women’s Libber who was on her way. Selznick might have warmed to her. Soft-faced and fastidious, he seems at last to have broken out of the dutiful son’s ...”

“... and world wars, our adaptable institutions have stood the test of time ... Domesday Book was much more than a record. It was, and still reflects, a philosophy of administration unique in Europe. It was the forerunner of all local government in this country. It was the basis on which land was distributed for profit and reward, and how this land was ...”

“... Florida,’ as Lauren Groff and I (separately) have done, perhaps a dozen years ago in her case, more than two dozen now in mine. For love and family in her case; in mine, improbably and occasionally grimly, for work. It took me a while to get used to G, as I’d like coyly to go on calling it. I started off part-time. Like Persephone, one term in two. I ...”

“... Milgram wrote: The results are terrifying and depressing. They suggest that human nature – or more specifically, the kind of character produced in American society – cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. In a naive moment some time ago, I once wondered whether in all ...”

“... not so much within the population as a whole, where religious extremists are a small minority (more confessional votes are cast in Israel than Pakistan), as within the Army. Officers and other ranks who have worked with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba in Kashmir have become infected with zealotry. At the same time native ...”

“... and in due course exchanged and sent home. It was a civilised business for the most part, no more than a footnote in the history of the war. In the history of Georgian polite culture, however, the capture of the Westmorland has come to be seen as a uniquely important event. The reasons for this are set out in an imaginative, subtle exhibition (until 27 ...”

“... and individually, should let them have their space. Sometimes the culture manages to do that. Thomas Pynchon is another famous recluse, not someone who grew sick of the publishing process and walked away, but someone who never took part in it. From a far distance, Pynchon’s identity seemed as mysterious and indecipherable as the Antikythera ...”