“... They remained of ‘one language, one society, and one religion’ for about 250 years, and held themselves to ‘the two great commandments, of loving the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and our neighbour as ourselves’. (‘This is the primitive religion of both Jews and Christians,’ Newton remarked, ‘and ought to be the ...”

“... the hospital and made, by all accounts, a bit of a scene. Had news of Barthes’s condition been held up by a conspiracy to stop people getting the idea that Mitterrand had put the evil eye on him? Did the staff even know what a prestigious patient they had on their hands? ‘It’s a shame there is no photographer in the room,’ Laurent Binet writes in his ...”

“... in Algeria were accompanied by archaeologists whose brief was to discover how the Romans had held the territory. The first questions were: where were the roads, and where the forts? Once Algeria was brought under French control, attention turned to agricultural production and the question of how the region had managed to become the bread-basket of ...”

“... of Animal Farm was delayed by Warburg’s shortage of paper, he maintained that Nye Bevan had held it up, fearing its effect on the outcome of the 1945 election. Later, in the days of Nineteen Eighty-Four, he kept a notebook listing the names of people he thought might be Communists. He had a conscience fit for a Jesuit confessor. After the death of his ...”

“... any memory of his existence’ and so changed her son’s name from James Donald Bowman to James David Hamel: ‘Hamel’ was the name of her next husband; she wanted to preserve the ‘J.D.’, but the Donald had to go. He’s only been known as ‘J.D. Vance’ – sometimes with dots, sometimes without – since 2014, when he changed his name to honour ...”

“... Meanwhile, Modi’s cronies have flourished. The Economist estimates that the share of wealth held by billionaires in India that derives from cronyism has risen from 29 per cent to 43 per cent in six years. According to a recent Oxfam report, India’s richest 1 per cent owned more than 40.5 per cent of its total wealth in 2021 – such statistics are ...”

“... had gathered. Local residents were appalled; up until this point free parties had usually been held far from towns and cities. ‘I have never seen such filth and degradation,’ one councillor fumed. ‘These people have turned Castlemorton into a cesspit, a human rubbish tip.’ What was it about raves that had to be stopped? Breaking into warehouses ...”

“... A Transparent Novel (2004) touches on similar questions. It’s about another public performance, David Blaine’s 44 days living without food in a Perspex box suspended over the Thames. One girl is convinced that the box is made of glucose: ‘When he thinks nobody’s looking, can’t you see the bastard licking?’ Other onlookers call him ‘a fake, a ...”

“... these things. Djokovic has won the most slams (24 to Nadal’s 22 and Federer’s 20) and held the number one ranking for the longest period (428 weeks in total). He also has a leading head-to-head record against the other two. But Federer has the most titles overall (103 to Djokovic’s 100 and Nadal’s 92) and the most at Wimbledon, the tournament ...”

“... merely the unprintable overflow from other magazines); and besides, its quality has more or less held steady down the years. It is, of course, the gossip-and-disclosures side which gives the Eye its particular place in social and journalistic history; and this investigative side – on which Marnham rightly concentrates – has fluctuated wildly in ...”

“... of a man facing a huge breathtaking vista of mountains, mist and sun, a version of Caspar David Friedrich’s Traveller above the Sea of Clouds. A closer look tells us that this man is engaged in painting the railing in front of him, and just now standing back to survey his handiwork. In several different countries, Cartier-Bresson will show two or ...”

“... he charts as being clearly pacificist rather than pacifist, albeit one in which pacifists still held an ‘honoured place’. Defencism – the creed of most British foreign secretaries – rested on the need to retain a ‘balance of power’. However, as Ceadel points out, defencists rarely stooped to define any national interest which such a balance was ...”

“... the institution Sidney Webb created. His thinking obviously was that socialism on the Fabian model held the future in its bones. As disinterested knowledge about the economy, society and politics systematically advanced, so would the inevitability of gradualness, wave by wave, bring in the collectivist tide. Thus Webb was unmoved by Shaw’s protests that the ...”

“... in Woodward’s work. ‘A Sailor’s Thoughts on Dry Land’ is a characteristic example:   he held Daisy’s Rancid hand, that he would soon Eat, but saw her instead As a tower higher Than Sears, in whose crimson Elevators he travelled ... The crimson elevators indicate a strong sub-Freudian strain in the book, reminiscent of surrealism (there are lots ...”

“... now meant enjoying a practised familiarity with expensive rare books and manuscripts. Despite David Garrick’s bequest of his impressive collection of Renaissance playbooks to the new British Museum in 1779, this effectively meant that to be a legitimate Shakespearean critic now required the independent means to own a substantial private library – such ...”