“... just before the birth of the state described in Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ and David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat. Both books deal with the last years of the Mandate, when the rightist nationalists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang waged a fierce campaign against British forces and the Arab population, provoking an increasingly harsh and ...”

“... rest of the book, simultaneous correspondences with two Oxford contemporaries, Frank Thompson and David Hicks, Murdoch, if still not quite a writer, is now at war and no longer the ingénue of the student troupe. The ‘playtime of the ’30s when we were all conscience-ridden spectators’ was over. She remained a Communist, however, toeing the Stalinist ...”

“... opening pages of Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion, the archaeologist David Lewis-Williams examines the earliest records of symbolic behaviour. It is unlikely we will ever pinpoint just when the human habit of investing objects with significance took hold. But for the moment, until fresh discoveries arrive, the most striking ...”

“... that on the US side there is as yet no readiness to talk. There is some evidence that General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Afghanistan, is more in tune with Afghan realities than his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal. But both have been committed to the current ‘surge’ of extra US troops. Petraeus’s image in the US as a man who had ...”

“... the aristocracy with lineages going back to 1066. Soaring effortlessly above the mêlée, F.W. Maitland, a greater historian than either (or anyone then or since), asked to be updated on the progress of ‘the battle’ from his winter resort in the Canaries. We know more about what happened on the field of Hastings that October Saturday than about ...”

“... As General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, prepares to report to Congress on 15 September on the success of George Bush’s ‘surge’, Bush himself is trying hard to talk it up and to discredit the policy of withdrawal. In a speech on 22 August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, he resorted to the new and risky strategy of using the example of the US withdrawal from Vietnam to support his position on Iraq ...”

“... her litany stated, Mirror of Justice, Cause of Our Joy, Spiritual Vessel, Mystical Rose, Tower of David, House of Gold, Ark of the Covenant, Gate of Heaven and Morning Star. Not a woman I liked, on the whole. She was the improbability at the heart of spiritual life; a paradox, unpollinated but fruitful, above nature yet also against nature. She could have ...”

“... and find it wanting – Cardew was excited by the alternative that they appeared to offer. David Tudor, Cage’s pianist and pupil, was an important new influence, as were other American composers like Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and La Monte Young. He even contemplated emigrating to the United States. Cardew returned to London to digest these ...”

“... than sixty galleries, at a cost of $450 million. Roughly half of this great sum came from the late David Rockefeller, longtime chairman of the board (his mother, Abby, was a co-founder of the museum), and the other half from just four people: the hedge fund billionaires Leon Black, Kenneth Griffin and Steven Cohen, and the media mogul ...”

“... the magazine published a controversial account of the trial by Hannah Arendt.In 1961, Lore married David Segal, a young literary editor who had made a name for himself rescuing the rejected (as one of their number, William Gass, put it). David ‘insisted’ that his wife should return to Vienna to face her ...”

“... those of 1945, 1964 and 1997; neither has found any inspiration in 1924 or 1929. Peter Clark and David Torrance both set out to reassert the political importance of the 1924 government and to restore the place of its senior figures in the history of the Labour Party. Both focus on high politics, and in particular the way the members of the first Labour ...”

“... of isolation and unease, of hopelessness. The strange democracy of madness is his theme: David Hume and his breakdown, as described to the physician George Cheyne; and from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne, the story of the idiot boy, who spent the summer eating bees, his only earthly occupation. Porter takes his cue from Burton’s ...”

“... too knowing or too perky among the native flora and fauna of his examples. Dennis Enright and David Rawlinson pass the test with flying colours, and their observations not only shed light on the topic but add their own quota of good things to the many they have selected. They are well aware of the possible drawbacks, and of the fact that friendship and ...”

“... But there are immediate difficulties with the book, difficulties of a kind once ascribed by David Lodge to a figure seen at academic conferences: the figure of the Deconstructionist who, radically sceptical about the existence of selfhood, identity and the subject, nonetheless continues to go for an early-morning jog. The jogging Deconstructionist – a ...”

“... As I write this, the Liberal MP David Alton is about to introduce a Bill changing the upper time limit on legal abortions from 28 weeks to 18. If he succeeds, more women will be forced to give birth against their will, and more will be obliged to give birth to children already known to be severely handicapped. Whether he succeeds will be determined by a House of Commons where 13 out of every 16 MPs belong to the sex that does not get pregnant and does not, traditionally, take on the main responsibility of childcare ...”