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“... with the big picture left as a task for a better-informed future. Arguments depending on single grand ideas tend to be the property of popular history writers, the best (or at least better) sellers grinding very obvious axes and telling of the clash of civilisations, the upside of empire and so forth. But of course all histories are motivated, whether they ...”

“... far from the grey days and the harsh skies of reality, ‘we’d be looking up in our minds into a grand sky, and seeing lakes, and broadening rivers, and hills are waiting for the spade and plough.’ Ending with not one but three contending predictions for the future of the couple, The Well of the Saints is not so much about what might have been (the subject ...”

“... of the Indian Army or of the home forces. Instead, he was fobbed off after her death with two grand-sounding offices which carried little real power and kept him out of the country: Inspector-General of the Forces (1904-7) and C-in-C Mediterranean (1907-9). There was clearly no prospect of any further military advance, and in 1911, the Duke began a new ...”

“... American judiciary is far more assertive. Presidents can hire and fire government servants on a grand scale, but many of these positions – even cabinet positions – are barely worth the hassle of occupying. None of this has changed for Donald Trump, the hirer-and-firer-in-chief. What is new is his attitude to the lack of direct coercive authority at his ...”

“... and translations of the Book of Psalms, the original book of Dave – supposedly written by King David, the Neim Z’mirot Yisrael (‘the sweet singer of Israel’) – ‘substantially shaped the culture of 16th and 17th-century England, resulting in creative forms as diverse as singing psalters, metrical psalm paraphrases, sophisticated poetic ...”

“... A layman might be forgiven for assuming that those two at least were on the same side. But when David Mayfield and Susan Thorne, two young American scholars, cited Stedman Jones and Joyce as exemplars of social history’s ‘linguistic turn’ in an essay published in Social History in 1992, a tempest ensued. Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, two of Stedman ...”

“... was preceded by Paris (1810-13), where he spent a year ‘beneath the eye’ of Jacques-Louis David. Here he received the full stamp of French neoclassicism. But David, whom Eckersberg described as a ‘very rigorous and precise teacher’, was also ‘against submission to one particular overall style’, and ...”

“... Barrett, who died of cancer in 1961 – Barrett was nearly 16. (There was Roger Waters, too, and David Gilmour – who’d replace Barrett within moments, almost, of the band’s success. Both were Cambridge boys. Both, Willis tells us, had messed around with paint pots in a late-toddler phase in the same Saturday morning art club as Barrett at Homerton ...”

“... which could have been sold separately, or used to bump up the price tag by another couple of grand. We are all in it. All culpable for the same failure of nerve. On my way to Belsize Park, I stopped off at Compendium Bookshop in Camden Town to look for a Céline biography that would validate my experience of reading, and relishing, the novel London ...”

“... and the Union debater, have all gone into the making of this extremely elegant and rather grand figure. In teaching, research and administration his career is a testament to the rise of a new professionalism in the Universities since 1945. But into this brave new world he has imported much of the style and spirit of the pre-war gentleman scholar, for ...”

“... 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 dominated the production and whatever our personal opinions might have been, it was clearly a grand achievement. It had an immediate appeal, and that is a final, or almost final, dramatic test. I have not myself seen it, but the response, including a number of reports from dramatic critics, was clearly uncompromising. Two critics only, according to the ...”

“... The hat band helps to cramp our brains. The cravat finishes the work, Like bowstring sent from the Grand Turk. ‘Written for My Son, and Spoken by Him at His First Putting on Breeches’ (1731) As Mary Barber knew, male clothing is as irrational a cultural imposition as women’s. Yet, while the absurd, even unhealthy frivolity of female clothing has been ...”

“... David Wilkie, 20 years old, a sober, modest son of the manse, came to London from Edinburgh in 1805. He brought with him a couple of pictures, a sound training and great diligence. In 1806 he exhibited The Village Politicians at the Academy to great acclaim. Scotland had produced a Dutch talent – a Teniers or an Ostade ...”

“... of yesteryear were not necessarily the counterpart of today’s municipal park keepers. The grand scale on which they were required to operate, ordering about small armies of subordinates in ambitious projects to lay down walks and flatten shrubberies, brought out in the best of them the talents that go to make generals. The inherent rootedness of the ...”