“... such titles as ‘Is Life Worth Living?’ and ‘What Makes a Life Significant’.John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle’s book is an anthology of these writings, from a letter James wrote when at Harvard Medical School in the 1860s to ‘A Pluralistic Mystic’, an argument against rationalising away mystical experiences that was published in 1910, the year he ...”

“... is a price you must pay for some victory over and above Pearse And Connolly and the ‘right rose tree’. It is, as he said, also ‘liable to bias’. The Queen at the wall in Ireland was not entirely unlike Willy Brandt at the Ghetto memorial. Whether ‘the ultimate reality must be anarchy’ who can presume to say? ‘Tradition is ...”

“... third in the medals table, behind China and the US. Andy Murray won the US Open in tennis. Justin Rose won it in golf. This summer, Murray won Wimbledon and Chris Froome followed Wiggins to victory in the Tour de France. The cup ran over. There’s plenty of material for a different story, too. Woodward followed his world cup triumph with a poor Six Nations ...”

“... of the DUP founded by the magnificent fundamentalist preacher Ian Paisley. Their first child, Jonathan, was born, and Iris was brought low by post-natal depression. She sought relief in her local church, where, one day, she found her faith validated by a lovely coincidence. The speaker told the story of a soldier dying in Galwally hospital, and Iris was ...”

“... great-grandsons of Queen Victoria: Philipp became the King of Italy’s son-in-law, and Christoph rose to a high rank in the SS. In his engrossing account of their role as mediators between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Royals and the Reich, the American historian Jonathan Petropoulos showed how their ability to smooth ...”

“... The portrait of Rissarro, from Sennett’s early The Hidden Injuries of Class (co-written with Jonathan Cobb, 1972) is as classically, tragically American as Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman, only to my mind far richer. Sennett has portrayed other figures who are just as touching and historically illuminating: Rico, the successful, hollowed-out consultant in ...”

“... lesser outbreaks battered London for the next eight years. Whenever deaths from plague in London rose above 30 a week – the number was later raised to 40 – the theatres were ordered shut, with the result (as Leeds Barroll showed in his groundbreaking Politics, Plague and Shakespeare’s Theatre) that from 1603 to 1610 public playhouses were probably ...”

“... novel was, at least until quite recently, a bit short on theory, though Christine Brooke-Rose has done what she could to put that right. What tends to be ignored is the degree to which practically all the modern novelists now admired, though not for their technical stunts, have gone in for ‘experiment’, from James, Ford and Conrad and Joyce ...”

“... see the folks who disapproved of her. It all gets a little desultory after that, partly because Jonathan Pryce has decided to play Perón as just a nice chap – a little reserved and distant, but certainly a gentleman compared with all of Evita’s other fellers. You also start thinking about the limits of the genre the movie belongs to: the pop ...”

“... care for the little animal.’ In my study of robots in Massachusetts nursing homes, 74-year-old Jonathan responds to his robot baby doll by wishing it were a bit smarter, because he would prefer to talk to a robot about his problems than to a person. ‘The robot wouldn’t criticise me.’ Andy, also 74, says that the My Real Baby robotic infant ...”

“... is entertaining. The man described in Helen Langdon’s catalogue essay – and, more fully, in Jonathan Scott’s 1995 biography – is loud, deplorable, disarming. Before settling in Rome in 1649 at the age of 34, Rosa had trained in his native Naples and had passed a charmed nine years in and around Florence. That one-time hub of artistic innovation ...”

“... establishment wanted to dominate the working classes. Studies by two academics, David Torrance and Jonathan Schneer, are aimed at a popular audience. Torrance focuses on high politics and elites, on the dubious basis that politicians and the middle classes are ‘more inclined to record their experiences than striking railwaymen, printers and bus ...”

“... spontaneous wit besides. I was working with him at the time when Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose was being laboriously raised from the depths of the Solent. This was being done by means of a cradle when suddenly a cable snapped and the wreck slipped back into the water.‘Ah,’ said Richard. ‘A slight hiccup on the atypical journey from grave to ...”

“... gold teeth in the brutal mouths of tycoons; the newspaper obituaries of dead children – he rose to heaven, he joined the angels – and their tragic white coffins; baroque mouldings; excrescences carved in granite on the vulgar façades of banks; coat and hat racks made with the horns and hooves of deer or mountain goats; coats of arms for common last ...”

“... and anxious to extend its power over policy, ministerial appointments and foreign affairs. Tension rose throughout 1992 and reached a climax in March 1993 when an impeachment motion was tabled and failed only narrowly to achieve a two-thirds majority. In April, a referendum was put to the Russian people: did they support the President, did they support his ...”