“... career as a conservative ultramontane priest, became a liberal journalist, and ultimately embraced Christian socialism. While the high politics of the July Monarchy were often derided as lethargic and boring – ‘a bland … bourgeois stew’ in Tocqueville’s words – public life was otherwise feverish and unpredictable. For Tocqueville, this ...”

“... Epistemologically, the medieval church’s synthesis of ancient philosophical rationalism and Christian mythology had never been entirely stable, but it had supplied a comprehensive account of this world and the next, and the path of the believer from one to the other. Protestantism, in discarding this sophisticated cosmology for the bare letter of the ...”

“... so to speak – began:It is very remarkable … how frequently we find some of the earliest Christian remains in the vicinity of pagan mounds, tumuli and other ancient structures, as if the feeling of veneration remained round the spot; and, though the grove of the Druid was replaced by the cashel of the ...”

“... and refine this recruitment strategy with the devshirme, the ‘harvest’ of young boys from Christian families in the Balkans and southern Russia, who would be taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam and trained for careers in the army (as Janissaries), the palace or the bureaucracy. The key principle was that the army should not be recruited from the ...”

“... with pitchforks’) appealed to the same bloc of voters with a programme that was militantly Christian, white, nativist, provincial, protectionist and anti-Washington. In 2000, Karl Rove cleverly enrolled this quasi-Poujadist faction in his grand alliance of libertarians, born-agains and corporate interests. It’s worth remembering that in 2004 every ...”

“... blow rather than the scrupulous fleck of paint. It’s as if Rodin had apprenticed himself to Gwen John, and that isn’t at all how their story played out. After The Ghost Writer Zuckerman became Roth’s stand-in of choice, in Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson, the three books being republished in 1985 as the trilogy Zuckerman Bound, with The Prague ...”

“... but the strange truth is that they happen all the time. Unfortunately, having finished Christian Wolmar’s book I will never now be able to enjoy a long-distance journey on the Metropolitan, knowing that from 1910 until the start of the Second World War commuters – and returning theatregoers – could for sixpence travel in one of the ...”

“... more than those who had formally embraced the dominant religion, had an affinity with the ‘Christian outlook’ that saw Protestantism as more a commitment to good order than to God. Both Stern’s parents were baptised, and although he seems never to have had much interest in religion, his sister did. She insisted on going to confirmation classes in ...”

“... enormous bills), nouvelle cuisine was christened and publicised by the journalists Henri Gault and Christian Millau, and was, in Steinberger’s opinion, a genuine attempt to overthrow Escoffier’s ‘cuisine classique’. While Escoffier had once said ‘faites simple,’ classic French haute cuisine had evolved into a practice bound by rigid rules, based on ...”

“... sensibility in her fiction. Forbearance, gratitude, humility and an obligation towards others – Christian virtues – are meant to compensate for our shortcomings. Even the restless, selfish Wilmet, eventually recognises that life is ‘a glass of blessings’ – the title of the novel she appears in. (The quotation is borrowed from George Herbert, one of ...”

“... At 2 p.m. the first trucks arrived at the Fosse Ardeatine, a cave complex south of the city, near Christian catacombs dating from the late Roman Empire. On the command of a junior SS officer, Erich Priebke, the prisoners were led in, five at a time, hands tied. They were made to kneel at the far wall, then one by one they were shot in the back of the ...”

“... an instance of ‘Neo-Christianity’, meaning that it was an attempt to show you could still be a Christian without believing anything in the old way. Clearly Positivism was superior to this ignominy. The review attracted much attention, as did Harrison’s forthright views on other matters. Like Mill, he wanted to bring Governor Eyre to trial for murdering ...”

“... but even here his illuminating suggestions must be weighed against the distinguished essay by John Creaser in the Lindley volume which points, heretically and convincingly, to the ‘royalism’ of Comus, or at least of the occasion for which it was written. The radicals were apparently against ‘authoritarianism’ – but who was more authoritarian ...”

“... architects is essentially a list (Meades likes lists) of refined barbarians. The pantheon contains John Vanbrugh, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, S.S. Teulon, William Butterfield, Frederick Pilkington, Dominikus and Gottfried Böhm, Claude Parent, Rodney Gordon, Richard Rogers (in his Gothic moods), Zaha Hadid. Sometimes, as with the Communist emulator of the style of ...”

“... cows, hawking bread in the streets, scaring birds, bookkeeping for the parish overseer. Like John Clare, who escaped to the woods to read ‘Sixpenny Romances’ as a child, he loved books and hid them from stern elders who equated reading with laziness. Unlike Clare, he got money for books from stealing and used to squirrel away halfpence when he was ...”