“... in an inspired piece of commissioning, they asked Christine Hamilton to review An Accidental MP, Martin Bell’s account of how he ended up wearing nothing but white suits. And now they’ve got Honor Fraser, a supermodel, to write about Nicholas Blincoe’s latest novel, White Mice (Sceptre, £10.99), because it’s set in the world of fashion. The thinking ...”

“... two.In Knowledge Lost, published in German in 2012 and now translated into English, the historian Martin Mulsow argues for fresh consideration of members of the European Wissensprekariat, or ‘intellectual precariat’. The expansion of German universities during the early modern period created a surfeit of graduates, many of whom were unable to find ...”

“... Mystery of Freemasonry Discover’d (1724) and Samuel Prichard’s Masonry Dissected (1730) to Martin Short’s Inside the Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Freemasons (1989), the dominant genre in Masonic literature has been the ‘exposure’. Rituals, passwords, oaths, handshakes and symbolic imagery pique the curiosity of the uninitiated, or ...”

“... of JFK: Minute by Minute) and Emma Craigie (the author of Chocolate Cake with Hitler and King Henry VIII: The Exploding King). Strictly speaking it ought to be called ‘Hitler’s Last Two Days’, since it opens shortly after midnight on 29 April 1945: ‘Eva Braun is in her bedroom having her hair done by her ...”

“... Andrew Martin​ ’s Early Work functions simultaneously as a celebratory autofiction about literary life in the United States and an indictment of the generation that populates it. ‘Most of the people I associated with considered themselves exceptional,’ says Pete, the protagonist, and we may take this to mean above average or, simply, those to whom normal rules don’t apply: ‘So you work from, uh, home?’ ‘Yeah, I’m a bum,’ she said ...”

“... and its inhabitants have frequently been massacred. Round about 1000 BC, the city was captured by King David. Assuming that he existed – and there is no archaeological or other evidence for him, or for Solomon, Moses or Joshua, outside the Bible, the relevant books of which were written hundreds of years after the events they purport to describe – David ...”

“... of relationship, however, exists between newspapers and the national Establishment. On this point Martin Walker quotes approvingly the views of Wilbur Schramm: ‘Prestige papers are shaped, to an important degree, by what the leadership in the country wants to know and wants known. The leadership in the country is also shaped, to an important degree, by what ...”

“... about the Slump and how to cure it, and, by extension, right about the Old Gang blocking his path? Martin Pugh’s publishers tell us breathlessly that ‘this book demonstrates for the first time how close Britain came to being a Fascist state in the interwar years.’ Is that a fact or just a pretty piece of hype? Does the limelight that Mosley continued to ...”

“... the most powerful woman in Europe, a defiantly hands-on female ruler whose marriage to Ferdinand, king of the lesser Spanish kingdom of Aragon, created the germ of modern Spain and marked the arrival of a formidable new power in world politics. Their conquest of the Moorish emirate of Granada and their deployment of the Inquisition, forced conversion ...”

“... the undertow of the Red Scare plays out with an unmistakable whiff of real menace. Describing Martin Gang, a lawyer famous for scrubbing the stain of disloyalty from Hollywood personalities, Clancy writes: He operates under a strategy that correctly perceives the Red Scare as driven by antisemitism by co-operating with congressional Jew-baiters who call ...”

“... an old Irish saying goes, ‘while he takes the gold out of your teeth.’In Master of the Game, Martin Indyk shows Kissinger at work before, during and after the October War, and highlights his most acclaimed achievements in its aftermath: persuading Israel to cede small patches of occupied territory and convincing Egypt and Syria to recognise the ...”

“... commit the sin of Babel? Not according to Stout; for he is chosen (along with Jefferson and Martin Luther King) as an example of a moralist who has gone about his work in a non-Babel way. On the other hand, Kantians and utilitarians are branded as sinners, although it is left dark how they offend if Aquinas did ...”

“... Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Mark Twain, Mississippi journalist Hodding Carter and Martin Luther King Jr, to name just a few from the last two centuries. These figures are not to be found in The Southern Tradition, but Southern they were. Even if racism could be purged from the conservative cause as readily ...”

“... to an apartment house.’ The extensive rioting and looting that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, although ostensibly a spontaneous expression of outrage, in some areas quickly lost its focus. One youth, asked why he was rioting, is reported to have said: ‘Because what’s-his-name was ...”

“... War. Each generation of Nedeeds has a Luther (the Christian name suggests Lucifer, rather than Martin Luther King) and he is always in charge of wedding and funeral arrangements, a solemn and forbidding master of ceremonies. The well-paced, ironic narrative, cleverly modulating into the bemused, commonsensical natter of ...”