“... had a place. But knights were hard men. The great scholar Abelard, to be sure, was taught to read and write as his knightly father had been before him, but he also learned the aggression of his social class and brought the competitiveness of the duel to his scholarly debates. Churchmen attempted to harness the energy of knights in projects like the ...”

“... epic’. We might also compare him with the hero-villains of Shakespeare, with Brutus, Macbeth or Richard III, raging at the ghosts of their victims. Francis Phelan is not a pathetic old man: he is frightening. When we walk guiltily past the alcoholic tramps of Charing Cross, there are some who seem too degraded to be helped and others who seem too ...”

“... is, according to Burgess, the novelist’s own fault, since he made it difficult for people to read it as an exaltation of fidelity and chastity (among other things) by including the forbidden words, and especially ‘fuck’. Admitting that the word is ‘ancient and honest’, Burgess affirms that over the centuries it has acquired an immoveable patina ...”

“... during the Thirties; each was an important art-collector. But there the resemblance ends. Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor (1879-1953), Duke of Westminster – called Bend’Or from the family coat of arms – was the product of a landed Cheshire family whose estate, Eaton Hall south of Liverpool, dated from the 15th century. The family’s first hereditary ...”

“... Defeat of the Spanish Armada (1856-70), his early 20th-century biographers, Sidney Lee and Conyers Read, presented him as an astute and distinguished patriot who laid the foundations for the modern security services. But then Read’s three-volume study of 1925 reflected his own political preoccupations and professional ...”

“... in the name of objective science. The cycle was repeated in 1994 with the publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, which extended Jensen’s basic thesis into a 900-page exposition of the genetic bases of social inequality, crime, poverty and unemployment. In the meantime, a re-examination of Cyril Burt’s work in ...”

“... and to order their release if they are not convicted. The distinguished South African jurist Richard Goldstone, no friend of terrorism, pointed out at the time that the Security Council’s post-9/11 resolution calling on all member states to legislate along the lines of the Patriot Act of 2001, which permits everything from indefinite executive ...”

“... meditation on beginnings. The heading is also the first two words of the first sentence, so you read: ‘The beginning’ – then turn the page – ‘of things – when is it exactly? Astrid Smart wants to know. (Astrid Smart. Astrid Berenski. Astrid Smart. Astrid Berenski.) 5.04 a.m. on the substandard clock radio. Because why do people always say the ...”

“... new material on Lenin’s more bloodthirsty and ruthless side (see The Unknown Lenin, edited by Richard Pipes) or even the human side uncovered by Service. Lewin might also be called Leninist in his analysis of what went wrong with the Soviet Union: bureaucratism spoiled everything. ‘Bureaucracy’ has always been a dirty word in Soviet vocabulary, and ...”

“... essay in the book describes what can be learned about family life from gravestones. Humphreys read hundreds of inscriptions, contemplated the scenes represented on pottery and stone tomb monuments, painstakingly reconstructed family trees, and analysed the patterns of burial in a number of different sites. She found that nuclear families tended to be ...”

“... a further impetus: ‘I was reminded of how little students know about historians they commonly read ... It seemed worthwhile to try and place historians in their professional background, and to show how our thinking about the past reshapes itself in their hands from generation to generation.’ But of course; and some undergraduates find this process of ...”

“... this account, calls it ‘value-laden’ and asks: ‘Why should not Frieda choose to smoke or read rather than attend to household chores?’ She would hardly accept an answer that runs anything like this: Lawrence, though often very unwell, did a lot more than his bit around the house as well as writing as hard as Trollope, so it must have been ...”

“... the farm labourer as bearing the huge symbolic weight that this culture has bestowed on him, since Richard Jefferies allowed Hodge to lumber into view, in the 1880s, a huge, romantic figure, of elemental simplicity of mind. Indeed, Evans’s earliest work can be clearly placed in the context of the neoromanticism of the Second World War and the early ...”

“... to supply evidence on word usage, the thoroughness and accuracy with which these sources were read, and the use made by the lexicographers of the evidence which the source study provided. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult for the average OED2 user to form an accurate opinion of any of these three factors. According to Brewer, ‘only one study ...”

“... Star declares here, and his collection offers helpful accounts of influential thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Benedict Anderson and the radical-turned-Neo-Conservative historian Eugene Genovese, as well as thoughtful reviews of significant debates, such as the contested legacy of Darwin (Stephen Jay Gould v. sociobiology), the stake of revisionist ...”