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“... skewed picture of the Crusades in Western scholarship.’ I’m not sure what he means by this. David Hume, in his History of Great Britain (1754-62), denounced the Crusades as ‘the most signal and durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation’. Gibbon considered them to be an expression of ‘savage fanaticism’. In a ...”

“... Cockerell reports on politics for Panorama. Peter Hennessy burrows Whitehall for the Times, which David Walker also serves, as social policy correspondent. They have brought into the light much which, if not actually hidden, has never been articulated quite so fully. Politicians, civil servants and Fleet Street have always known these ‘secrets’. The ...”

“... and Sabotage. Indeed, reading through the other essays from fifty years of the magazine in David Wilson’s well edited and compellingly illustrated collection suggests that critics in general, with one or two spectacular exceptions, like Eisenstein on Chaplin and Agee on Sunset Boulevard, are rather less aware of what is going on than the auteurs. But ...”

“... on to recommend and support the madness of the Lords’ rejection of the Budget. Like Mr Mackay, David Dutton has lumbered his book with a subtitle: ‘Gentleman in Politics’. Austen Chamberlain was certainly in politics and probably a gentleman. But it is not clear whether ‘a gentleman in politics’ is meant to describe some particular political ...”

“... to be processed”. I call those who accept this view of man and nature Turing’s men.’ David Bolter is a Classical scholar although he has a degree in computer science. He writes engagingly, encompassing the sweep of history right back to the Greeks. Computer technology is a curious combination of ancient and Western European technical ...”

“... expended on sustaining an image of Japan as a place of fanatical businessmen, of hara-kiri and sci-fi gadgetry. Books, articles and television programmes focus on whatever is most extreme and bizarre in Japanese life; the Japanese people may be viewed as amusing or alarming, expert or devious, but they must above all be seen to be non-human. While they remain ...”

“... the better class of sleeve-note in his record collection will hardly have need of it. The title of David Wulstan’s book Tudor Music promises well. The periodisation of music into ‘Medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’ is misleading for virtually every country except Italy, and Professor Wulstan’s selection of the Tudor monarchs as setting a time-scale has ...”

“... grace without its looking like self-satisfaction. An answer is suggested, as it happens, in David Cook’s marvellous Missing Persons. We are quite unaware, as this humorously sordid saga of bread and marge, tinned beans, false teeth, betting shops, adverts, punks, child prostitutes and novelty key-rings progresses, full of implausible chance ...”

“... 1986, the centenary of Henri’s birth, Carcanet have brought out Alain-Fournier: A Brief Life by David Arkell, describing him as ‘the noted literary sleuth’. This, I think, does Arkell an injustice. As a sleuth, he hasn’t been able to solve the long-standing problems: what was the surname of the station-master’s daughter? What was Yvonne de ...”

“... rather than La Realidad, misled by assurances that I would find the local leader, Comandante David; I was stranded where not much was happening for the third anniversary of the uprising. But was I the only one who was not ‘in Reality’? After all, the Zapatista movement likes to appear as something of a phantom, expressing itself in concealments and ...”

“... of Dickensian horror: to Oliver Twist, fed on the scraps that the Sowerberrys’ dog refused; to David Copperfield, beaten by the fiendish Murdstones; to the little half-starved Marchioness, kept in a dungeon by Sally Brass; to the Nicklebys and Nell, driven out into the harsh world. Indeed, orphans are so plentiful in the works of Dickens that it is quite a ...”

“... On 18 July​ 2003, the body of the weapons inspector David Kelly was found in the woods on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire, two months after he’d revealed that the Blair administration had exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Rachel Wells, the central character in Number 11 and the narrator of the first of its five overlapping stories, was ten when Kelly’s body was discovered ...”

“... Dibdin to compose patriotic songs about saucy, lovable and brave sailor lads. The essays in David Cannadine’s collection illustrate the many ways that Nelson-worship served the war effort. Kathleen Wilson observes that his wounded body became ‘the screen upon which all those who had fought . . . who had lost their limbs or senses or a loved one to ...”

“... that in Germany Angela Merkel was nearly flattened herself for having allegedly espoused it. David Davis has promised not to swerve to the right, but as he is already standing on the right touchline, that does not mean much. According to David Cameron, one of the other candidates, Davis is a man of great ...”

“... be allowed in this country.’ Lady Austin would have enjoyed Elton John’s ‘marriage’ to David Furnish last year – even the Daily Express managed to celebrate it as a ‘triumph for gay rights’ – in the Windsor Guildhall, where Charles had married Camilla only eight months before. Having arrived in the same year as the Civil Partnership ...”