“... European culture – and as part of ‘high culture’, in ways outlined by Peter Burke and Robert Darnton. Science and technology can then be distinguished, and theoretical advances, in, say, the earth sciences, are not assumed always to have produced great practical breakthroughs. As one of the contributors, Steven Shapin, neatly turns it, Was ist ...”

“... was formed in Natal in 1896 to resist further ‘Asiatic’ (meaning Indian) immigration; the young Gandhi found himself classified as a ‘coolie lawyer’. In Kenya Colony, white settlers threatened armed violence if no limits were set to the influx of Indians, who were soon providing not only manual labour but almost the whole retail and services ...”

“... Second, we now have a chance to rediscover ‘the man behind the legend’ and, in particular, the young revolutionary eclipsed by the elder statesman. We can see, for instance, that he was not just a young Turk, the co-founder, in 1944, of the ANC’s Youth League, but the driving force behind the movement’s armed ...”

“... later reflected, that he had had an experienced mentor to call on for advice – someone such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who ‘had always seemed to me “one of the family”’. Greene was distantly related to RLS through his mother’s cousin. ‘Names which appeared in his Collected Letters were photographs in our family album. In the nursery we played ...”

“... on the practical advantages of learning, Johnson turns the matter into a mini mock-epic. The young rower is identified with Orpheus, who accompanied the Argonauts on their voyage in pursuit of the Golden Fleece. Boswell’s Johnson, the great hero of letters, enlists the boy in an endorsement of the poet’s power and a pagan search for a prize which has ...”

“... a voice-over commentary. This is quite different, however, from the documentary form originated by Robert Flaherty in the 1920s and which is still employed in a large proportion of the films labelled as ‘ethnographic’. In these, a group of characters are followed through a series of activities arranged according to the dramaturgical requirements of a ...”

“... lives. Scotland is a place where cultural artefacts and past battles – the Stone of Destiny, Robert Burns, Braveheart, Bannockburn – have more impact on people’s sense of moral action than politics does. The people have no real commitment to the public sphere, and are not helped towards any such commitment by the dead rhetoric of the ...”

“... expected is the scope of the extra-vehicular ‘education’ Wardaddy seems ready to offer the young man. As the crews relax after taking a small town, Wardaddy leads Norman into a building where they find two women, Irma (Anamaria Marinca) and her young cousin Emma (Alicia von Rittberg). While Irma fries the eggs ...”

“... the rushed observations of Andrew Marr. An academic industry has flourished. Now both Weight and Robert Colls have written requiems for the old Britishness which are also ruminations on a new, more democratic England. Britannia, for so long a proud Amazon, armoured and helmeted, repulsing European foes and civilising barbarians is, these days, according to ...”

“... Council is busy and full of students who only leave when it closes at 8 p.m., and seeing these young Italians reading English books and magazines, watching videos and generally finding this a worthwhile place to be is immensely heartening. The British Council can still be thought a bit of a joke but like the World Service it’s a more useful investment of ...”

“... tries to rise to as a correspondent, giving exquisite elegies for old friends like Mrs Kemble and Robert Louis Stevenson; even the noble, scrupulous and harrowing account of his loved sister’s last days and hours is improved by an altered phrase. Some things probably came near to defeating him, though he records them desperately. Professor Edel chooses to ...”

“... is to some extent disparaged. I’ve always been in two minds about Piper, liking him when I was young with his paintings ‘modern’ but representational enough to be acceptable, a view I trotted out years later when Romola Christopherson was taking me round Downing Street. ‘I suppose for Mrs Thatcher,’ I sneered, ‘Piper is the acceptable face of ...”

“... and in June 1951 sailed to France with his wife of four months, Patsy Southgate. His cover – young writer at work on a novel – had the virtue of being true. He was 24 and the Atlantic Monthly had just published his first short story.‘Sadie’ is set in rural Georgia and narrated by a man called Webster who goes to a stable yard because he wants to ...”

“... When in his late teens and early twenties he began his career in London, people noted how ‘young and schoolboyish’ he was. His diaries from that time record enthusiasms for the novels of J.M. Barrie and Arthur Ransome, for Emil and the Detectives and The Sword in the Stone. And he was much pre-occupied with writing a string quartet about his ...”

“... subsequent books had been well received, but it was North that really established him: it prompted Robert Lowell to declare him the best Irish poet since Yeats, and he was widely celebrated by the London reviewers, who seemed on the whole untroubled by the suggestion that the Irish might be constitutionally disposed to killing one another. Heaney didn’t ...”