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“... all really influential and durable philosophy books, this book’s power lies not in propounding a nice, clean, sharp, conclusive argument, but in its details: in the elegant way in which Dennett’s novel metaphors allow him to handle all sorts of odd and paradoxical little facts, and to undermine all sorts of seemingly self-evident truths. The reader of ...”

“... In Sussex, the aspiring young cricketer who hit a ball through a church window found that Richard Montagu decided to prosecute him for sacrilege. In Norwich, both Montagu and Wren found themselves preoccupied with stopping ‘football and other profane activities’ in churchyards. It was not until the outburst of godly reformation ushered in by the ...”

“... Reagan against); and Haig went away with the comforting impression that Reagan was a genuinely ‘nice guy’ who had spoken to him as if he had really liked him. In Haig’s book there are periodic references to this disarming quality, which gradually comes to seem rather sinister. ‘Because of habitual courtesy,’ Haig says of Reagan at one point, ‘it ...”

“... be on offer a few days later at the first big Christie’s sale of 2008. Viewings like this are a nice city secret: free admittance to room after room of modern classics, some of which can be seen only for these few days as they slip from one private collection into another. It isn’t like being in a regular gallery; there’s something different about the ...”

“... However, as the 1960s began, Rugoff continues, artists associated with Pop and photorealism – Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Richard Artschwager, Vija Celmins and Malcolm Morley – turned again to photography, not only as a source of images but as a way to convey the look of consumer society, already ...”

“... her love child by a professor of sociology, rampages through the text. Sometimes there is a nice derangement of metaphors: ‘The acuity of a trained eye, then, can be counted as one of the motivations for collecting which blunted the harsher trajectory of art’s profitability.’ ‘Sweeping ties with the past proclaimed an illusion of ...”

“... the Federal Republic (East Germany gets its place, but only a very small one; it would have been nice to see a Trabant opposite the Beetle). Clearly an exhibition illustrating the high standards of German workmanship and its contribution to European culture through the ages is going to concentrate on objects produced for the rich and powerful. But this ...”

“... assimilation of Indians to European norms or mutual toleration and coexistence. Trade provides a nice example of the complexity that Richter has in mind. European manufactures had an immense impact on native North America, but their introduction did not involve a straightforward replacement of native material culture nor was it evidence of a ravenous and ...”

“... Richard Rorty has made us familiar with the distinction between two sorts of philosophy, which he calls ‘systematic’ and (I think infelicitously) ‘edifying’. The first sticks to the central epistemological tradition, which assumes that it can deal systematically and progressively with reality; the second is essentially of the periphery, and its exponents are pragmatical opponents of the institutional tradition ...”

“... school, perhaps because the man portrayed appears to be blind in one eye, as was Saladin.’ Nice try, but there is no evidence at all that Saladin was blind in one eye.) To return to the Maqamat miniature, al-Hariri and al-Wasiti were major figures in their respective fields. If the dust-jacket of a book about Western culture featured one of ...”

“... explained to his mother. What he did not tell her was how he had landed such a grand invitation. Richard Ingleby cannot tell us either, but Kahn was the first of many men and women to be charmed by Wood. His good looks and ‘friendliness’, the quality that people singled out as the key to his appeal, enabled him to drift with apparent inevitability to the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Republican England, as presented by Dr Hutton, shows a surprising amount of vitality even in 1659. Richard Cromwell’s regime appears as enjoying a considerable body of support, and there is much food for thought in the fact, illustrated by the career of General Monck, that on the whole Monarchy and Protectorate, through the crises of 1659-60, drew support ...”

“... Revolution’. What came out, however, was not necessarily originated by the period. It is a nice problem to distinguish causation from succession. In 12 short and easygoing chapters, originally the Merle Curti Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Hill’s account slides to and fro from causation to succession. For example: ‘Locke drew on ...”

“... encounters but zero orgasms. Adèle, an attractive Parisian woman in her thirties, with a husband, Richard, a child and a desultory job as a journalist, has what the DSM-5 would describe as a hypersexual disorder, that is, if sex addiction weren’t such a controversial diagnosis that the DSM-5 clinicians decided not to include it. ‘Adèle has been ...”