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“... that gave support to, and were in turn explained by, such a hypothesis. Indeed, Schapiro may be said to have pioneered the social interpretation of what he called ‘disco-ordination’ in early and medieval art. But generalisation from these cases struck him as unfounded. How about those works of art where conventional and advanced elements are ...”

“... the fact that fewer than a quarter of historians in France work on the history of other countries may help explain Burguière’s restricted field of vision. Bloch and Febvre had many international connections and shared a broad, cosmopolitan vision. Bloch himself declared that historians should ‘base their plan, the treatment of the problems they ...”

“... hoped; and Stargardt eventually recognises this when he concedes that ‘the parties themselves may have been suppressed, but the Nazi regime knew that their subcultures remained.’ Despite this concession, he generally writes as if working-class consciousness had altogether disappeared under the Nazis. One of his individual subjects, Karl ...”

“... wealth inherently destructive. Timon of Athens only just made it into the First Folio, and it may never have been performed. But if the austerity of the text denied it popular appeal, it became down the centuries a catalyst of radical thought. Timon’s great speech about gold (‘This yellow slave/Will knit and break religions, bless ...”

“... This is Richard Evans’s second book on McEnroe. The Struwwelpeter of tennis is now 31 and No 4 in the international ratings. The first book, McEnroe: A Rage for Perfection, came out eight years ago when McEnroe was 23 and rated No 1. The new book belongs to the genre of defensive biography. It is as though Oliver had written a life of Roland: the wise, steady friend standing up for the brilliant, wayward hero ...”

“... reward. That is, MacArthur stakes a wager on potential: it is not what you have done, but what you may do, which is judged, or prejudged. ‘The kid will go far,’ is the message they send. Such prophecy is notoriously inaccurate. The MacArthur operation has not been going long enough for one to see how many out-and-out winners they have in fact chosen ...”

“... am the Fellow with the great belly, and he my Dogge.’ No one now quite follows this joke, which may be an airy reference (to distract attention) to the Man in the Moon. What is more interesting than Falstaff’s ancient joke is his capacity to make us listen to him while he tells it. We concentrate.Falstaff can get away with this debate as to who ...”

“... of exhaustion’ – the exhaustion of ‘the philosophy of consciousness’. Habermas may be the best critic these philosophers have yet had – the most understanding and imaginative, if also the most implacable. Further, the drama Habermas unfolds in this richly-textured and vibrantly polemical book is likely, for accidental reasons, to become ...”

“... nurtured in the Germans a palpable smugness that is sometimes hard to bear, however justified it may be. In Italy a general amnesty for political and military prisoners was issued in June 1946; there was no consistent policy for prosecuting Italian citizens for war crimes and Fascist bureaucrats and administrators stayed in office. The judge appointed in ...”

“... and the Resistance movements in the Conseil National de la Résistance, which met in Paris on 27 May 1943. The following month he was arrested near Lyon, where he had organised another Resistance meeting. No one knows exactly how or when Moulin died – he was last seen semi-comatose after a horrific beating at Montluc prison; indeed, it isn’t certain that ...”

“... straight, but by dint of breathing and sighing all round and round it, to arouse in the reader who may have had a similar perception already (Heaven help him if he hasn’t!) the illusion of a solid object, made (like the ‘ghost’ at the Polytechnic) wholly out of impalpable materials, air, and the prismatic interferences of light, ingeniously focused by ...”

“... counsellor and a bureaucrat of the old school. Henry had remained loyal to Henry Tudor throughout Richard III’s reign, despite starvation and torture; despite, according to legend, being interrogated by Richard himself. ‘Thou servest for moonshine in the water a beggarly fugitive,’ ...”

“... Taverner’, thus seems to have kept a pub in Ipswich, while his great-great-grandson, Richard Duke of Suffolk, nicknamed ‘Blanche Rose’, was accepted as King of England – but, alas, only by the French, and only till he was killed in battle at Pavia. There is an irony, on which Derek Pearsall ends his book, in the extirpation of the Chaucer ...”

“... healthy place – morally or physically. If the whores didn’t get you, infections did – which may explain why it gained so many hospitals in the mid-19th century. In 1854, Dr John Snow advanced the cause of public health – and epidemiology – by persuading the local Board of Guardians to remove the handle from the Broad Street (now Broadwick ...”

“... Charles Doyle’s biography of Richard Aldington opens so readily at the 24 excellent photographs with which the book is illustrated that the temptation to look at them, before one gets involved with the text, is irresistible. The series starts with a rather determined-looking boy with cap and striped jersey, holding a football ...”