“... need to assuage their sorrows, get their revenge or enjoy the humiliation of the old order. There may be no way of disposing of painful history. The clerics tell us that we have to put it behind us if we want to get to heaven, but when it comes to history here on earth, maybe we have just got to live with ...”

“... Adolf Hitler or to die for him. The personality of the Führer had me totally in its spell.’ It may seem obvious that a barrage of propaganda played an important part in helping the Nazis to reach parts of the electorate the other parties failed to reach (such as first-time voters). But there are also good grounds for scepticism about the broader potency of ...”

“... in itself ... the political press lost its bearings, its justification and whatever efficacy it may have had.’ Today there is political journalism without party, which Koss compares to ‘Christianity without dogma’. Under the old party managers who created the political press, a journalist was expected to share the views of his employer, but there was ...”

“... with my mother,’ he said in an interview. And then added: ‘But I absolutely reject that.’ It may be that ‘difficult women’ are a luxury that only homosexuals can afford in their lives. But if there is some truth in this (men who have to live with women, if they have any sense, must prefer them to be easy-going), there is none in its ...”

“... choice could be reconciled with ethical standards. The determining factor in her thinking, which may be compared with that of Jaspers in Germany, was the need for reciprocal freedom: if one wishes for one’s own freedom, then one finds it in the freedom of all. No type conduct is invariably right or wrong, and there are no fixed rules which free the ...”

“... and his donning an old brown robe to sit at his desk at dusk, like Balzac. Be that as it may, El Pais’s editorial page is thus made doubly noble by the new Nobel novelist. Recently a letter not to but from the Editor praised the writer’s exemplary habits of punctuality, order and cleanliness in terms so compelling they could force an untidy ...”

“... cannot put the book down. But sometimes you find yourself turning to a far less agile writer – a May or a Macartney on the Habsburgs, an Otto Pflanze on Bismarck – to understand the context, and to appreciate what Taylor achieved in simplifying it all. Taylor’s two books on the world wars are astonishing feats of clarity and compression. He himself ...”

“... de I’Homme and Musée Guimet have nourished modern artists as nowhere else. All colonisation may be barbaric, but some ends of empire are more civilised than others. As you watch Yoshi Oida barking and grunting at his archery disciples with wonderful contained authority, you are reminded not only of a Zen master test but also of a Keystone Cops ...”

“... has to be shot, and she asks that Erick should despatch her. This is the coup de grâce. The plot may sound like an opera summary, but there are no arias. Erick tersely explains his rejection of the girl: ‘I was not prepared to regard Conrad as a brother-in-law. One does not drop a friend of 20 years’ standing, though radiantly young, for a shabby ...”

“... social explanation adds significantly to our understanding of the development of psychiatry: it may illuminate the byways of the field, but the main thoroughfare is amply charted by accounts of the progress of medical science. Roy Porter’s sensitivity to this problem is acute. He prefaces his piece on Samuel Johnson’s melancholy by insisting: ‘It is ...”

“... a practice apart. This Bakhtin finds undemocratic, as if there were restrictions on what may be seen as ‘literary’. Anything in a language is ‘literary’ if it occurs in a literary work. So the ‘literary’ language is on absolutely equal terms with the ‘everyday’ language where both can be found to have entered literature. But the ...”

“... put ancient history on the map for modern historians, however cautious his Classical colleagues may be. But a good deal of the New History – particularly in the field of urban or regional history, for all the marvels of such tours de force as the two volumes on Birmingham by C. Gill and Asa Briggs – is strongly empirical and conforms more closely to ...”

“... that ‘it is one of the few Victorian attempts at making the place more delightful. Poor as it may be thought, it represents its time.’ He insisted that wall paintings which were fading be recorded, rather than restored, and on his departure from the post of Surveyor of the Fabric wrote: ‘The systematic cleaning of the structure and monuments ... has ...”

“... than the character, causes and implications of contemporary disputes, is the main subject. It may well be that the historical understanding thus arrived at will illuminate contemporary disputes, but there can be no assurance of this.Another approach is to assume that we know what the ‘crisis’ is and proceed to ask about its causes and prospects. This ...”

“... deserving and less fortunate than I. They do not have my ‘considerable wealth’. Some of them may have an odd notion of what being a working writer involves. They imagine it as being one continuous sabbatical, with all expenses paid from some inexhaustible source and with leisure to research and write all the books one had ever imagined – while, of ...”