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“... Rainbow, Salisbury Cathedral’ from ‘Various Subjects of Landscape’ after John Constable by David Lucas (1837) The uses of adversity are sweet as well as bitter, as the old Duke in Shakespeare almost said, and what is best about Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape is probably as much a result of hard times as what is not so ...”

“... and not simply about members of religious orders: Benedictines do not seem to suffer from it. David Knowles wrote a history of the monks and friars in medieval England that was instantly recognised as a masterpiece, but I can’t quite see a Jesuit pulling off something similar – though on a smaller scale John O’Malley’s The First Jesuits ...”

“... paved surface, apparently calming the anomic habits of drivers in the process. The book’s grand proposal was the total reconstruction of the area around Tottenham Court Road via a system of concrete street decks with motorways underneath. As an architect, Woodward is best known for his work as part of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation ...”

“... R. to Cardiff to see his grandmother on a potentially difficult day as it’s also the day of the Grand Slam rugger match between Wales and France. The train is very crowded and he sits in Weekend First next to a middle-aged French couple who he assumes to be fans, but with nothing in their behaviour that gives any clue. However, just before the train arrives ...”

“... of a proxy army. Although the invasion of Iraq was conducted by traditional armed divisions on a grand scale – nearly 180,000 troops from the US, UK, Australia and others – the occupation that followed devolved into an exercise in proxy management. The temptation to use direct military force to contend with the provocations of another state is ever ...”

“... invention of powered flight is so familiar that it’s easy to think we know all about it. David McCullough’s excellent biography The Wright Brothers brings the story back to life with facts that the non-specialist either doesn’t know or has blotted out with a misplaced broad brush. Yeah yeah, we get it: the brothers were provincial tinkerers who ...”

“... of the voters had left their quiet houses, voted ‘No’, gone home and shut the door. At seven David Cameron was on the radio. He intoned the words ‘our United Kingdom’ so many times I thought I’d be sick. Whose United Kingdom? Theirs. The Eton Mess and their cronies. Big Business. Neocons. The warmongers. Not ours. We left Edinburgh at ...”

“... of a conceit for classifying different areas of poetics. After identifying discussion of the grand principles of poetics with the drawing-room, analysis of particular hypotheses about poetics with the kitchen, he then says that with the notion of genre ‘we now come to the bedroom, where the really important things happen, and we are face to face with ...”

“... immediately after the war, conditions in Britain, especially in the cities, were pretty grim. As David Kynaston tells it, people were exhausted, low in spirits, their resources depleted, and over everything there hung the threat of another, probably terminal war. The dawn of the postwar era was cold and dark and bleak, but there was a touch of pink in the ...”

“... and the so-called Jews of today. If Zionism preaches a glorious history going back to the days of David and Solomon, then that history must be a fiction cooked up centuries later for ideological purposes. If Zionism maintains that Jews longed to go home, then they must have been content to stay put. And if Zionists base their claim to the land of Israel on ...”

“... so far rightwards that it isn’t really the same party any more. In that process of migration, David Blunkett was one of the key players. Blunkett is important not only because of how he behaved when in office – we’ll get to that in a moment – but also because of the journey he took to get there. A man who from 1980 to 1987 was the leader of the ...”

“... portrait, albeit of a distinctively colonial character and quality. Last year, the art historian David Bindman, who has studied the picture closely for thirty years, proposed that it is in fact a self-portrait, painted by Williams himself.What is the intent of the image and what is created by its beholders? The problem of Francis Williams’s portrait shows ...”

“... For anyone who prefers to concentrate solely on the negative side of the Pound ledger David Gordon’s selection inevitably offers material. Pound’s tone with those who were trying to help him was often rude and ungrateful, even when his situation was desperate. you punks NEVER connect ANYthing withanything else ...    do stir the mud in yr ...”

“... heart sinks a little: ‘by herself and Barnet Litvinoff’ seems to imply the indulgence of a grand old lady’s imperious vanity. ‘Russia was untamed and beautiful, disciplined yet ungovernable ...’ What, 229 pages of that? Yes, but she quickly wins the reader over by her courage, her curiosity, her keen sense of irony, and even by her ...”

“... toward its present form. McDowell is a Senior Fellow of Trinity and a well-known historian. David Webb is a Fellow Emeritus of the College and Honorary Professor of Systematic Botany. ‘Virtue and religion’ meant, of course, Anglicanism. The Fellows of Trinity were required to take an oath and, in most cases, to take Anglican orders. Undergraduates ...”