Search Results

“... have been major investigations in Scotland (the Calman Commission of 2007-8) and Wales – the Richard Commission (2002-4), the Holtham Commission (2007-10) and the Silk Commission (2011-14) – into the broader operation of devolution and the funding mechanisms that support it. Anxiety has focused not only on relations between Westminster and the ...”

“... even now by memories from school. Till I read N.A.M. Rodger’s book I could not have placed Richard Grenville and the Revenge within twenty years, nor had any idea what he was doing ‘at Flores in the Azores’; nor do I know even yet (for Rodger is certainly not going to mention it) who wrote the poem about him, but I can remember whole stanzas of ...”

“... to the Turks, who were often denounced for degeneracy – swords, slippers and sexual excess, as Richard Cobden put it – the Arabs were often admired for manly simplicity. David Urquhart, secretary at the embassy in Constantinople, wrote that Islam was not a false religion to be ridiculed: it taught no new dogmas, propounded no fanciful revelation and ...”

“... another occasion he noted that German intervention would ‘distract the attention of the Western powers to Spain and so enable German rearmament to continue unobserved’. Against the advice of his entourage, Hitler ordered twenty planes to be sent to Franco’s aid – twice as many as requested. Ten of the Junkers bombers flew directly to Morocco disguised ...”

“... the Jews using not only a language of racial inferiority but also one that ascribed awesome powers to the Jews.’ Confino takes the destruction of the Torah during Kristallnacht as the starting point for a wide-ranging discussion of the origins and nature of Nazi hatred of the Jews. In the Jewish religion, the Torah was regarded as the foundational ...”

“... occupied by the state bureaucracy. New laws and regulations gave party officials hugely extended powers over civilian life. They drafted labour, organised clean-ups after bombing raids, co-ordinated civil defence and mobilised the Volkssturm, the ‘Dad’s army’ of civilian conscripts who were meant to spearhead last-ditch resistance to the invasion of ...”

“... of the fact that, between the 1880s and the First World War, Germany, like other major European powers, possessed an overseas colonial empire. If you go to Windhoek in Namibia, you can still pick up a copy of the Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper which caters for the remaining German-speaking residents of the town. If you fancy a trip to the Namibian seaside ...”

“... Hoare, referring to recent acts of violence, claimed to have ‘been told that if we had had these powers two days ago it is very likely that we might have forestalled one or other ... of those outrages’. In the first two months after the Act was passed, 113 expulsion orders, 25 registration orders and ten prohibition orders were made, and by the end of May ...”

“... history of the past two centuries. But they have been, by and large, the achievement of colonial powers, and their political development remained in the retentive hands of European functionaries. Israel is different, and so were the Crusading kingdoms of the Levant which preceded it. Here, moreover, Europeans were not colonials but migrants, creating their ...”

“... since the two men seem to hate each other, but several things are at stake here: the balance of powers in the state they are now attempting to construct; the possibility of reform via the remnants of the Soviet system, as opposed to authoritarian reform from above; the possibility, or lack of it, of maintaining a democracy where a civil society is barely ...”

“... up a report in 1980 instructing the RUC to place spying ahead of solving crimes. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which hears cases brought against the security and intelligence agencies, confirmed in 2019 that MI5 had drawn up guidelines that would allow their officers to make representations to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, arguing that ...”

“... ministers, bypassing the president and the Reichstag. This was the second. The crucial emergency powers granted to the government by the decree of 28 February were periodically renewed right up to 1945. The Nazis used them to bludgeon their opponents into submission and their allies into compliance. By the summer of 1933 all opposition had been crushed, more ...”

“... of the royal prerogative, that has shaped the British constitution.In 1636 a London trader called Richard Chambers sued the mayor for having wrongfully imprisoned him for refusing to pay ship money. His case was that the tax was itself unlawful, having been levied by the Crown without the authority of Parliament. The court refused to hear the ...”

“... analyst would say about this one. In another essay, Solomon devastatingly dismantles Editha and Richard Sterba’s aggressive theory about Beethoven’s alleged homosexual interest in his nephew. Throughout the book we are aware of Solomon’s high intelligence, the immense width of his reading and his often shrewd perceptions, as well as his deeply ...”

“... results that nearly scuppered the First Crusade and did scupper all the rest. Visiting kings, like Richard and Philip II of France, bickered about precedence; the Christian nobility in Palestine fought each other for the increasingly enfeebled crown of Jerusalem; above all, Crusaders fresh from Europe, with all the bigoted ignorance of their modern successors ...”