“... Although medicine was in the 19th century, as it is today, far from a pure science, it held out the promise of a dispassionate, unideological, rational approach to the ills of the body, both social and individual. It was, in Max Weber’s sense, ‘a calling’, a secular equivalent to being chosen by God for his purposes. Germany’s Jews embraced ...”

“... willing to let him represent them in negotiations with the British at the centre, while they held onto their provincial fiefs. This fragmented and disarticulated landscape was one of the reasons for the hubris of Congress after the 1937 elections. To its high command, the League looked like a spent force that might be ignored while the various local ...”

“... from the Council or Commission. From its territory are further subtracted – not leased, but held in eminent domain – military enclaves three times the size of Guantánamo, under the control of a fellow member of the EU, the United Kingdom. The origins of this situation date back over a century, to the era of high Victorian imperialism. In 1878 the ...”

“... the secrets behind better Bombs. Success in achieving either, as the physicist and historian David Kaiser has argued, depended on resolving a problem about secrecy that was at once philosophical and political. If scientific and technological knowledge was crucial, did it come in discrete units, some of which needed special protection while others were ...”

“... to reason abstractedly, on the moral estimation in which particular classes of men should be held, or on the advantages attending political institutions, and to deduce his principles from arguments, drawn a priori from the nature of man, and who at the same time has surveyed men with attention, will probably feel a diversity of opinion, according to the ...”

“... to moral discourse and retaining a distinctly clerical air. The Labour guru in postwar Oxford was David Worswick, the well-known economist, not David Worick, as he appears both in the text and the index. By no stretch of the imagination can the students of T.H. Green be said to have ‘invented’ the Fabian Society ...”

“... could be viewed by scholars and historians. Southern Ireland wanted Casement’s bones since they held no secrets and could not speak, but the diaries were, and still are, dynamite, and the English, as we all know, are better at handling that sort of thing. The Black Diaries first became available in 1959. The Black Diaries: An Account of Roger Casement’s ...”

“... faced with evidence of the dangers of US blood products, Labour’s minister of state for health, David Owen, had told the House of Commons that he was funding an effort to make Britain self-sufficient in blood products by 1977. But he was given a new brief in 1976. The Labour government dropped the commitment to self-sufficiency soon after, apparently for ...”

“... the fatal tendency of the Conservative governments to which Britain has been subjected since 2010. David Cameron’s declaration in January 2013 that, if the Conservatives won the next election, they would offer a referendum on membership of the EU – which wasn’t a significant concern, never mind a priority, for British voters – is a fine ...”

“... fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost’. The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius added to Tyndall’s work in the early 20th century by pointing out that human activity was adding to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Because CO2, along with other gases ...”

“... place, the second cycle of postwar Turkish politics was set in motion. As soon as elections were held, it became clear that the voting bloc put together by the Democrats, though at first distributed across a number of successor formations, still commanded a comfortable majority of the country. By 1965, this was consolidated behind the Justice Party led by ...”

“... British soldiers, French veterans from Algeria and Belgian mercenaries were recruited by Colonel David Stirling’s company, Watchguard International Ltd, for operations behind enemy lines. In the South too the nationalists were divided, with Cairo backing the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY) and more radical groups congregating under the ...”

“... lost brother, Benedikt (who was in the Soviet army), notices at night that the books are ‘each held in place by an iron nail hammered through it. A spike driven through the pages of history, a spike through the pages of love, a spike through the sacred.’ That second sentence appears to place the narrative and its imagery and intent squarely in the line ...”

“... in Odessa is split down the middle. Since the Maidan protests began, the Ukrainian supporters have held nightly meetings at the monument to the Duc de Richelieu, the first governor of Odessa, at the top of the Potemkin steps. The anti-Maidan, as they call themselves, the pro-Russian activists, meet at a fairground near the railway station. The pro-Russian ...”

“... top woman at a string of second-rank ministries a few years earlier. Like Williams, Castle never held the great offices of state, but she wrung headlines and achievements from the most thankless of posts: seat belts and the breathalyser (as minister of transport), the Equal Pay Act (as minister for employment), and increased child benefit and wage-indexed ...”