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“... In the old days, when organic matter was supposed to be infused with some vital spirit that distinguished it from the cold clay of the material world, and the variety of human types and the possession of free will were in-controvertibly attributed to the powers and generosity of God, it was not so hard to understand how an embryo grew into a whole human being ...”

“... across Europe. Fencing had already become an important part of the German university curriculum by 1600, boosted by contacts with Spain and Italy, as well as France. In the 17th century, thanks to frequent encounters with Richelieu’s armies in the Thirty Years’ War, the duel established itself in the Holy Roman ...”

“... account, the life and love of Dora Jordan would occupy a place both ample and ambiguous. It would be ample because for more than twenty years she was the consort of the Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV, bore him ten children and lived with him in a state of domestic happiness and connubial bliss. But it would also ...”

“... in Gallery III. This room, the Academy’s traditional space for the stars, measures 82 feet long by 42 feet wide by 48 feet high, and the most obvious use to have made of it for this exhibition would have been to save it up for the Arte povera pieces, which (like Tiepolo beggars) are suited ...”

“... for ‘Beaumarchais’ has long been the brand-name of a product variously reprocessed by Mozart, Rossini and the score or so librettists and musicians who have perpetuated his plots, his characters and his name. The most intriguing question of all has centred on his role as catalyst of the Revolution. Was his impertinent barber the Sweeney Todd of ...”

“... fed up with his life so far, and perches precariously on a derelict factory roof, resolving to be independent and free from this on out: ‘I didnay care, that was how they called for me, well they could call for me all their life, that was how long they could call, that was from now on, cause I was finished with it; I wasnay sure what I was gony do, no ...”

“... accessible material has been quarried to the point of staleness and the figures still remaining to be disinterred lie buried at remoter historical levels, from which they can be extracted only with the deploying of more sophisticated methods. A sample of the new layer of riches that we can expect to ...”

“... tell whether a new consensus will replace it, or, if so, what the shape of that new consensus will be. The neo-liberal and neo-Marxist models offered by the Thatcherite Right and Bennite Left respectively are patently archaic and barren. Both rest on assumptions drawn from the primitive industrialism of the early 19th ...”

“... 19th century. But they were still a long way beneath, and they could not have been detected merely by looking at the statistics. Much the same applies to the decline of the Labour Party. Britain is the oldest industrial society in the world, with the most mature working class. She has no peasantry, and virtually no religious cleavages. She has (or had until ...”

“... it is hardly surprising that the construction of a memorial to Prince Albert should prove to be, in Lytton Strachey’s words, a ‘long, complicated and difficult’ process. The story of its conception, creation and construction, which lasted from 1862 to 1876, forms the subject of this book, which, unlike the memorial, is short, clear and ...”

“... is apt to assume, on the principle that mine enemy’s enemy is my friend, that nothing much can be wrong with it. After all, an institution which manages to upset Mr Tony Benn, Lady Falkender, Mr Michael Meacher, Mr Joe Haines, the editor of the Spectator and the sub-editors of the Daily Express cannot be all bad; and ...”

“... kept for that purpose. The skins, including bearded faces, were removed and flayed, thereafter to be donned by the warriors who had captured the Spaniards. It is the aim of Inga Clendinnen to explore the ‘distinctive tonalities’, the ‘experimental landscape’, the ‘interior architecture’ of Mexica society, so as ...”

“... had led the Resistance. According to the Gaullist narrative, France went to war in 1939 weakened by internal political struggles. It was quickly crushed in 1940 by the superior weaponry of the Germans and, for the next five years, the spirit of resistance was kept alive by de Gaulle and ...”

“... way immediately into syndrome status. In 1896, Théodule Ribot spoke of psychiatry’s inundation by a ‘veritable deluge’ of complaints, ranging from the relatively commonplace and self-explanatory, such as claustrophobia, to the downright idiosyncratic, such as triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13. Twenty years later, in his Introductory Lectures ...”

“... seems somehow more forgivable, to the huddled ranks of Poundians at least. Critics unimpressed by the psychodrama of Eliot’s Christianity, such as Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, much prefer Yeats and Stevens. And as a glance at any anthology of 20th-century British poetry will show, the prewar voices most audible today belong to Auden and MacNeice. From ...”