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“... as an intellectual equal. There are passing favourable comments on works of social history by Geoffrey Best and J.F.C. Harrison, but historians working in Taylor’s own areas of diplomatic or high-political history are almost invariably disparaged or deplored. Britain’s best-known Marxist historian is dismissed ...”

“... against the background of society as a whole. In his introduction to Professor Anderson’s book, Geoffrey Best observes that until recently much writing on military history has had little to say about the social context of warfare: ‘Sometimes sinking to uniforms, badges and buttons, it rarely rose above campaigns and battles.’ One purpose of the ...”

“... of the creative life, they are none the less eager to shine their light on their own work. At its best, self-consciousness is forgotten and the act of self-explanation becomes a part of the self-vindication of the work and even of the creative process in general. The interview is a medium obtained from television. In print, the subjects are left slightly less ...”

“... Wordsworth and Beddoes, together with a handful of 20th-century poets from A.E. Housman to Geoffrey Hill. In Wordsworth we are to attend particularly to line-endings and to prepositions, in Marvell to ‘a particular figure of speech’, in Gower to ‘diction and formulae’. The sophistication of the critic is to be given its full range but the ...”

“... Geoffrey Lloyd has held the position of Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science in the University of Cambridge since 1985. The creation of this personal chair not only honoured a great and generous scholar, but also gave a much-needed boost to the growing interest in ancient science: a subject which, over the last two centuries, had been pushed to the margins of Classical scholarship while simultaneously being eclipsed by the rise of modern science ...”

“... the enjoyment of the reader, and in a higher rhetorical style than is favoured by either. At its best, as in the essays on John Stow and William Camden, the method can produce work that is very vivid. Occasionally, the reader may be left wondering whether the vividness of the writing takes it a little bit further than the words of its source, or, as in the ...”

“... commemorated by a left-wing South African singing Zulu rock in the South Pacific? Perhaps it’s best we don’t know. One longs, at times, for the more considered attitude of Mao Tse-Dong, who, when asked what he thought the effects of 1789 had been, replied after some thought that it was still too soon to know.It is perhaps worth remembering that the 150th ...”

“... Geoffrey Grigson and I were touring Wiltshire in a hired car, a black Morris 1000 saloon, doing a piece of photo-journalism for Picture Post. I was taking the photographs. It-was 1951. The Mail had offered a reward of £10,000 for any information leading to the capture of the fleeing diplomats, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean ...”

“... that there might be some doubt about its authenticity. Much of the phenomenon must be ascribed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Born some thirty years after the Norman Conquest, Geoffrey, with his Norman name and strong Welsh connections, was probably the child of a mixed marriage. His achievement was to inject old Celtic tradition ...”

“... nor are all the places of publication. It scarcely matters in these circumstances that one of the best essays in the collection, J.P. Stern’s on Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull in the light of Nietzschean views of metaphor and morality, should be concerned solely with German literature. It is principally by asking what a literary canon is that the editor has ...”

“... In the days since Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation I have had a strong sense, not so much of history being made, as of history being invented: all the actors in this drama seem to be declaiming their parts as much for the history books as for the audience. That is true also of those whose duty it is to watch the drama and criticise the actors ...”

“... colour-supplement and topped everything off with this book, which her publishers are aiming at the best-seller lists. I’m afraid that, in a small way, it recalls Richard Aldington’s crack about T.E. Lawrence for ever backing into the ...”

“... of the newly-enfranchised ‘masses’. He was not willing, as Max Weber was, to make the best of the disenchantment by calling for a charismatic führer to raise the moral tone; or convinced, like Georg Lukacs, that the triumph of the philistines could be transcended with a Hegelianised Marx. But nor would he, like Theodor Adorno, resign himself to a ...”

“... Don’t let this get around.’ Hecht took his advice. Two years later he won the first Oscar for best story, for Underworld, directed by Josef von Sternberg (at that time screenwriting meant providing the scenario and captions for silent pictures). Mank’s younger brother, Joseph, followed four years later, also on a Paramount contract, and went on to write ...”

“... when painted by its admirers. For Prussia, even when enlightened, was never liberal. It was the best-organised, most disciplined country in Europe. When that is grasped, even Prussia’s ‘positive’ achievements can be seen in perspective. It was characteristic that Prussia should pioneer state schools and compulsory primary education, and that the ...”