“... on pre-existent economic development for which there is at least some ninth-century evidence? The French monarchy in the tenth century was weak and its economy slow to develop, which supports the politico-economic equation from both ends. But then what of Italy, already the most economically-developed part of Europe, where royal power was almost entirely ...”

“... In the past three years​ there have been seven military coups in former French colonies, all in West or Central Africa. Two coups in Mali, in 2020 and 2021, saw a president and then an interim president deposed. Assimi Goïta, a colonel in his early forties, is now running the country. In Guinea, Alpha Condé, a president in his eighties, was removed by the military in September 2021 after he tried to swing a third term ...”

“... and partly to the historical researches of scholars like Frances Yates, D.P. Walker and Peter French. In Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age, John Mebane offers an inclusive, deeply researched overview of the subject. He examines the many component parts of Renaissance occultism. It was, in the spirit of the time, a recovery of ancient ...”

“... a hard life these days for a naval historian. His readers, brought up on Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey, know all about the technicalities and the details of the service already. Stuffed with explanations of loggerheads and bitter ends, capable of laughing at jokes about dog-watches and sailing on a bowline, they will neither turn ...”

“... field rather than a serviceable set of working assumptions that enables critical commentary? In Patrick Parrinder’s account of this major change in contemporary culture, the theorist is seen as a presumptuous upstart who has forgotten his place. The traditional role of the critic is to act as middleman between author and reader – ‘making sense’ of ...”

“... Patrick Geary’s The Myth of Nations is more timely than he could have anticipated. ‘Historians have a duty to speak out,’ he writes, ‘even if they are certain to be ignored.’ Why such passion, such a sense of contemporary engagement, in a book about the very early Middle Ages? Since 1989, this period – between the third and eighth centuries – has been persistently misrepresented by Europe’s nationalist and racist politicians, who claim to find in the Middle Ages some kind of justification for their policies ...”

“... geography can be very much about chaps as well as about maps. In this instance, Alfred Weber and Patrick Geddes, Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus take to the stage. Furthermore, since the geographer as theorist must be complemented by the geographer as philosopher, it is suggested that there are lessons to be learned from that progenitor of the philosophy ...”

“... varnish. These colour forays bounce off against one of easel painting’s structural problems, as French tradition defined it – how to unify, how to arrive at cohesive effect through rhythms of highlights and darks. The canvas should be analogous to greater ensembles: as Roger de Piles wrote, establishing the principle in 1708, ‘All the world’s entities ...”

“... the country is full of grotesque throwbacks, and so does any comparison between the British and French real-estate markets. The French, having used the guillotine to good effect long ago, do not feel compelled to buy all-façade-and-no-comfort country houses, which could accordingly be bought for a song in places like ...”

“... to pick up Spanish prejudices, and Joseph de Jussieu, physician, mathematician and botanist to a French expedition to Ecuador in the 1730s, points out that the Spanish would not use bark from the red-barked variety of cinchona, ‘fearing that by the strength of its heat . . . it will provoke a burning fever’. He believed that the dramatic curative powers ...”

“... more disturbing, he had read in the press that the body waiting to go to Ireland was said by a French doctor to have been encased in a steel and leather surgical corset. The arrangements for Yeats’s reburial continued. On 20 August the Times reported that in two days’ time the corvette Macha would leave Cork for Dublin, and that Sean MacBride, the ...”

“... was found in the US mailbag at 46 Lower Belgrave Street in London there has been no new evidence. Patrick Marnham’s only novelty is the evidence from Taki, the Spectator gossip-columnist, to the effect that he knew Lucky Lucan had a powerboat and had made dummy runs with an eight-stone sack to the coast. That fits with Lucan’s remarks to Greville Howard ...”

“... our trees and houses, have longer histories than our country. My family home in Bouillon, on the French border, is decked with photographs of relatives who were born before Belgium was created. There are wooden clogs under the stairs that are older than Belgium. My family is working-class and post-industrial: Walloon first, European second and Belgian ...”

“... that the maidservant makes her fatal entrance. After the murder, Freddie takes refuge with Charlie French, a seedy, shady dealer in art and antiques, whose innocent and touching loyalty to an old friend almost leads to his own ruin. This, however, is the end of Freddie’s run, and here he skulks until at length the Police arrive to arrest their man and remand ...”

“... of the protean nature of Powell’s gifts of intellect as well as the odd shape of his career that Patrick Cosgrave decided to write of his subject’s ‘Lives’. This is a mistake, since Powell’s life has been very much of a piece. The failure, in the conventional sense, of his political career arose from the same personal traits and gifts as the ...”