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“... century, but by the Arab invasions of the Mediterranean in the seventh. A Belgian, whose first major work was a history of his native country, Pirenne saw the maritime commerce of the Mediterranean as the key determinant of ancient civilisation. Because, in his view, it survived the Germanic invasions, the barbarian kings of sixth-century Europe were able ...”

“... to his habit of changing mistresses every ten years or so; to the fact that he was the first major artist whose rise to a position of importance coincided with a revolution in the dissemination of reproductions; above all, perhaps, to his photogenic qualities. The squat, powerful figure, feet planted firmly in the sand, bare torso gleaming, bright eyes ...”

“... Left, Michael Walzer, in a work glowingly evoked by the still more eminent liberal philosopher John Rawls, in his aptly entitled The Law of Peoples. Indeed in attacking Iraq, we will be doing no more than completing the vital preventive strike against the Osirak reactor of 1981. Who now complains about that? 4. The Human Costs of War. These are indeed ...”

“... Macdonald’s advice to publish under a pseudonym. His admission drew much attention, and caused John Crowe Ransom to retract his acceptance of one of Duncan’s poems for the Kenyon Review. The essay was also notable for its earnest protest against the ‘cult of homosexual superiority’, a volley probably directed at the Surrealist Charles Henri ...”

“... she should take the fight all the way to the Democratic convention in August. And then there was John McCain, in what seemed to be a high school auditorium somewhere in Louisiana (even he wasn’t sure: he thought he was in New Orleans, but he wasn’t), addressing a few hundred sleepy geriatrics, struggling with the teleprompter and grinning weirdly at ...”

“... by both Houses of Parliament warned that unless significant work is carried out swiftly, major, irreversible damage may be done to the Palace. Since then, things have deteriorated: 50 per cent of the Palace’s mechanical and electrical services are at high risk of failure by 2020. The report echoed the call made in 1828 by ...”

“... James, however, they do represent one of the contexts in which he started writing, a context that John Sutherland describes as being ‘interestingly Jamesian’. Besides, searching out unattributed work by major writers is a much more worthwhile enterprise than claiming, like Mr Mybug in Cold Comfort Farm, that Branwell ...”

“... to 1970s Bethnal Green.Much of Chaimowicz’s work is pale and delicately outlined, but his first major piece glitters away in the near dark. Celebration? Realife, which occupies the first room at Wiels, was first shown at the Gallery House in London in 1972. (Chaimowicz lived at the gallery during the run and would invite visitors to join him for coffee ...”

“... and in 1861 Fontainebleau was extended and decreed ‘une réserve artistique’. It was a major influence on the designation of national parks in the US – Americans were among the main collectors of the Barbizon School – beginning with the opening of Yellowstone in 1872.The exhibition curators praise the harmony that Rousseau creates between the ...”

“... first time in this country, when Rayner Heppenstall, together with his daughter, translated his major works into English and published a short study of him. That modest volume served Roussel’s cause far better than will the present translation of Foucault’s dispiritingly portentous essay of 1963, a lugubrious introduction to Roussel’s essentially ...”

“... Critical Biography’, felt duty-bound to include sustained discussions of ‘all of Swift’s major works and of many of his minor ones’. Alan Downie’s Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (1984) did much the same, its author believing that ‘the explanation of Swift’s worldview’ was the biographer’s business, and that this involved examining the ...”

“... enthusiasm of the progressive intelligentsia. Religious buildings were always fair game. The first major church was destroyed in 1929 and in the Thirties the destruction of churches, monasteries and cathedrals reached a frenzy. Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew, predicted a wave of anti-semitism: it was suppressed then, but encouraged after the war, though Kaganovich ...”

“... USA’, ‘The Promised Land’, ‘The River’, ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ – flight is a major trope, a desperate pedal-to-the-metal attempt to salvage meaning from a collapsing world, where motion is the only answer to a stalled life. The restlessness of Springsteen’s characters reflected his own metabolism. ‘I was not at ease, and to be at ...”

“... Yates, D.P. Walker and Peter French. In Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age, John Mebane offers an inclusive, deeply researched overview of the subject. He examines the many component parts of Renaissance occultism. It was, in the spirit of the time, a recovery of ancient sources. Its philosophical base was Neoplatonic and ...”

“... John Fothergill, the high-handed host of the Spreadeagle at Thame between the world wars, described himself in Who’s Who as ‘Pioneer Amateur Innkeeper’. Evelyn Waugh, sending him a copy of Decline and Fall, inscribed it to ‘Oxford’s only civilising influence’. To those who, in 1931, goggled and giggled at his innkeeping confessions, Fothergill was the contumacious dandy for ever locked in combat with ‘clients’ who fell short of his standards, a man prepared to track down and rebuke a brigadier-general who, with his wife, dropped in to the Spreadeagle to use the lavatory without a please or thank you ...”