“... could scarcely have been higher, there would have been fewer beggars in the streets of all our major towns, the government would have exercised some responsible control of our financial system, thousands of our fellow citizens would not now hold mortgage debts on houses that greatly exceed the value of the houses themselves, manufacturing industry would ...”

“... among the best known of India’s ancient monuments, after the Taj Mahal. Paralleling Sañchi, the major stupa of south India was at Amaravati (‘place of the immortal’), a river site in Andhara Pradesh. A few carvings are preserved in a small museum at Amaravati itself; a major collection is in the Madras Museum and ...”

“... his Long March through it in the opposite direction, escaping from the south-east, he counted it a major achievement simply to have survived. Khubilai, already in his mid-thirties, was commander of this bold expedition as far as present-day Yunnan province on the Burmese border; a subordinate completed the encirclement by turning eastward and invading ...”

“... In the movie, however, it provides the occasion for one of Hollywood’s happy endings, in which John Quincy Adams moves the Supreme Court to a recognition of human rights by eloquently invoking the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, this never happened. The justices did, indeed, send the Africans home, but their decision turned on maritime law and ...”

“... than in London, where the American artist Copley exhibited his Death of Chatham and his Death of Major Peirson in the 1780s. Thereafter, an impresario was generally involved, such as William Bullock, who exhibited Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa as well as dwarfs, Eskimos and so on in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly (which was later to serve as one of ...”

“... is like a heavy artillery piece in a muddy Flanders field: point it in one direction and it is a major undertaking to point it in another. But was there more to what was ‘going on’ in Blackpool? In the preceding few days the commentators had begun to discover the ‘dual labour market’ or the ‘Germanisation’ of the English working classes. The core ...”

“... book represents the ending of a grand tradition in the subject, for what he does is to combine Sir John Clapham’s concern with what was happening in the leading sectors of economic activity with the fairly recent techniques and insights of national accounting and demographic inquiry. Crouzet approaches the Victorian economy of Britain initially in ...”

“... philosophy. As a youth, Melbourne spent two winters in Glasgow, living plainly and studying with John Millar, disciple of David Hume and Adam Smith, and one of the most influential proselytisers for the Scottish Enlightenment. This experience gave him a strong commitment to the principles of political economy; it also profoundly influenced his thinking on ...”

“... is bad enough. But according to one of the world’s most influential climate scientists, John Schellnhuber, ‘the difference between two and four degrees is human civilisation.’ Thanks to the global paralysis since 1992, the ‘window of opportunity’ for reducing emissions fast enough to avoid this scenario is starting to look more like a crack ...”

“... government buildings, cathedrals and a monastery. Immediately outside it was the China Town, the major trading centre, and the ‘beautiful square’, also known as Red Square, on which Ivan built the Cathedral of the Protecting Veil, or St Basil’s, to celebrate his victory of 1552 over the Khanate of Kazan. From then on, the Kremlin played a leading role ...”

“... version seems a plausible paraphrase of their role as enablers rather than policemen. Really major scandals make even the biggest countries appear to shrink to the size and social homogeneity of, say, the Isle of Man. The effect is greatly enhanced when the mass media all take to singing the same tune and, from here in Seattle, Britain now looks more ...”

“... Archimedes’ death is the one fixed point in his biography: the 12th-century Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes gives a birth date of 287 BC. That may be correct, and it may also be correct that his father was an astronomer. But everything else is uncertain. We can, however, say something about the world he lived in. Syracuse and Tarentum were among the ...”

“... A man of deep culture and reading in many languages, Edward Luttwak has at least three major personae – strategist, journalist and scholar. His practical experience of contemporary policy and defence is reinforced by an almost professional knowledge of military history, particularly in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and he expounds his views in lively prose that gives maximum exposure to the most eccentric of them ...”

“... In the spring of 1974, as reports multiplied of his involvement with crooks such as John Poulson and T. Dan Smith, Reginald Maudling disappeared to Paris with his wife, Beryl. The Daily Mail’s Harry Longmuir had little difficulty locating him in the ‘Président’ suite of the George V. Checking in himself, Longmuir spent a whole Sunday morning with a confused, disorientated Maudling in his dressing-gown ...”

“... veterans at its core, including the legendary fighter pilot and theoretician of conflict Colonel John Boyd, argued that the complex and expensive weapons systems championed by the Pentagon and its industrial partners were inevitably unreliable and often ineffective in combat. Instead, they advocated cheaper, simpler and thoroughly tested systems such as the ...”