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“... David Freedberg’s new book is illustrated with wonderful, detailed drawings and engravings of plants, fungi, fossils, birds, insects and animals – nearly all made in the 17th century. Freedberg is an art historian; the starting point of his book is a dream he had sometime before 1986 in which Anthony Blunt appeared holding a drawing of an orange ...”

“... In Island of Shame (2009), a history of the military bases on Diego Garcia, the anthropologist David Vine reports that in 1960 a Pentagon policy paper advancing dominion was titled ‘South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Monroe Doctrine and Force’. From guano to copra to guns. Britain’s former colonies in Asia were none too happy as news about these ...”

“... to fry). To write about the works of Hazlitt, one needs a bias towards history and philosophy. David Bromwich’s study concentrates on the latter discipline, for he is appraising Hazlitt’s understanding of Abstract Ideas and his command of words to express them. But there is also a historical theme running through this excellent book, accompanying the ...”

“... This book contains reflections on both history and theory, and is written with David Marquand’s usual elegance and intelligence. Its 19 essays concern themes familiar to readers of his biography of Ramsay MacDonald and his distinguished study, The Unprincipled Society: how can we devise for modern Britain an appropriate ‘social democratic’ theory of social action, and how can we construct a ‘progressive’ coalition which might give it adequate electoral support ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... years after the event. And perhaps she was right, though that cannot be the reason for their son, David Profumo, once more resurrecting it. Presumably he needed to get it out of his system. Whatever his reasons, he tries to discover in this well-crafted memoir, which is effectively a joint biography of his parents and himself – a difficult undertaking ...”

“... Current Biography, July 1976. Edgar L. Doctorow was born in New York City on 6 January 1931 to David R. and Rose Doctorow, whom he has described as ‘old-fashioned social democrats’. His grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Doctorow grew up on Eastburn Avenue, in the Bronx. His mother was a pianist and his father had a store in ...”

“... grow accustomed from childhood: the most menacing army in the region is described here as if it is David against an Arab Goliath. Yet the Jewish Goliath has sent Lebanon back 20 years, and Israelis themselves even further: we now appear to be a lynch-mob culture, glued to our televisions, incited by a premier whose ‘leadership’ is being launched and ...”

“... Upstairs at the V&A exhibition, the layout is that of the digital panopticon. Arty photos – by David Hughes – are projected on the walls all around of the same ugly, theatrical dresses you can see life-size on display, worn by skinny department-store mannequins, with books and lampshades and hedges for faces. The fabrics themselves are digitally panoptic ...”

“... from the towers were hidden away. The Naudet brothers, who had gone inside the towers with hand-held cameras, later deleted from the soundtrack most of the noise of bodies crashing to the ground. Again it was said that the 11 September footage was like watching a movie spectacular, something that was beyond belief. Later it became clear that what was being ...”

“... Bible into Chinese. (‘He boned up feverishly on Manchu,’ enthuses his other biographer, David Williams, in his schoolboyish way.) Borrow had to argue in Russian with the Tsar’s board of censors, hire and supervise ill-educated Estonian compositors to set up Mongolian print (which, he said, ‘differs little from the Mandchou’) and prepare to ...”

“... David Foster Wallace’s parents, Sally and Jim, were the sort of couple who read each other Ulysses in bed while holding hands. Jim read David and his younger sister Amy Moby-Dick as a bedtime story. It wasn’t inevitable that the boy would grow up to write an epic novel, but it wasn’t accidental ...”

“... to ‘scrap the Human Rights Act, and introduce a British Bill of Rights’, but that was in David Cameron’s 2015 manifesto. Johnson’s manifesto promised only to ‘update the Human Rights Act’ – hence the IHRAR – not repeal it.The consultation document gives very little away about what a new bill of rights might look like. How closely it might ...”

“... and running. Laing had founded a group known as the Philadelphia Association along with Esterson, David Cooper, Clancy Sigal and Sid Briskin, and these men formed the core group of loving brothers. The idea had been to find a house in which people could live while in the throes of a psychotic episode, where the process of madness could run its course without ...”