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“... and hence its full power to help us understand how beliefs and events emerge, then as now. Robert Bartlett understands this very well. In The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages, four lectures given in Belfast, he does something much harder than merely divert us with medieval oddities or explain them away as misunderstandings. He explores ...”

“... stretching from the Atlantic to the Indus valley. This was not just an astonishing feat of world conquest, comparable to the feats of Alexander and the Caesars: it had religious and social implications as far-reaching as the death of Christ and the Bolshevik Revolution. While Christianity merely revitalised the ancient Roman Empire, providing it with a new ...”

“... and a sprinkling of updates, but there is no advance on Martin Arnold’s The Vikings: Culture and Conquest (2006), or Robert Ferguson’s The Hammer and the Cross (2009), or even Gwyn Jones’s magisterial History of the Vikings (1968, revised 1973). Consider the ‘key questions’ Parker starts with. First, why should ...”

“... for the victory must certainly go to the Italians, who by embarking on a campaign of colonial conquest without coherent objectives, adequate forces or investment, ensured the outcome of the conflict. Had they been more circumspect they might have kept their settlements at Agirad and Asmara, but Italy’s First African War – a term that in Italian still ...”

“... in a full-blooded cauchemar. Was it conceivable that Stalin, who looked on Berlin as his by conquest, would hesitate to destroy any ‘air bridge’ the West might inaugurate – either by putting up balloons and anti-aircraft barrages or by fighter interception (as distinct from hostile ‘buzzing’)? Or would he, knowing a casus belli when he saw ...”

“... believes the US has a duty to submit the entire galaxy to a Monroe Doctrine, and that the conquest of space will be a repeat of the conquest of the New World. The Germans feebly try to interest their guest in the notion of limits. Anderson doesn’t mention another tradition of domestic US anti-imperial ...”

“... grinds his teeth in silence, no interviews, no comment. Silence of a different sort descended on Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department when journalists started probing after her death: Marilyn had been a phone call away from killing Bobby’s career, and possibly brother Jack’s as well. The silence of those whom Anthony Summers failed to catch suggests ...”

“... cleansing’, with its suggestion that nothing more than a routine housekeeping task is involved. Robert Bevan begins his book with an account of his childhood obsession with photographs and film footage of the destruction of Europe’s built heritage in World War Two, an obsession that ‘felt wrong’ in relation to the ‘greater evil’ also available for ...”

“... 1568 founded the seminary in Douai for the training of English missionary priests, and the Jesuit Robert Parsons, the position taken by the Catholic and Protestant authorities alike was that men faced damnation in dissembling their faith. Nevertheless, a way around the dilemma was found in the doctrine of mental reservation, which was most fully developed in ...”

“... of New Age philosophies, in which personal growth is seen (implausibly) to be fostered by the conquest of the cancerous growth within the body. But some of it is implausible in a much more down-to-earth way. It is honestly hard to believe many of the claims that sex is better after a radical mastectomy; or – for that matter – that the stoma of a ...”

“... only son of General Sir Hector Munro of Novar KB, MP, who had played a famous part in the British conquest of India; he was victorious at the Battle of Buxar in 1764, which secured control of Upper India, and responsible for the capture of Pondicherry from the French in 1778. This success had been parlayed into a Parliamentary seat (for Inverness, held for 36 ...”

“... is gradually revealed as he tells us with disgust about an American marketing executive with a Robert Redford moustache who is ordering Pimm’s in an irritating manner, spoiling the atmosphere of a pub which Croucher favours. This bounder is called Tony (Croucher’s least favourite name) and kisses a British girl ‘full on the lips’. This is ‘not ...”

“... summer, we have the heat index, first proposed in 1979 by the Australian environmental scientist Robert Steadman in an article in the Journal of Applied Meteorology entitled ‘The Assessment of Sultriness Part I: A Temperature-Humidity Index Based on Human Physiology and Clothing Science’. Steadman’s index depends on two variables – temperature and ...”

“... and close relationships with senior figures in the Elizabethan regime, such as William Cecil and Robert Dudley. His activities abroad were instrumental in his appointment as principal secretary to the queen in 1573, which marked the beginning of nearly two decades of virtually uninterrupted activity at the heart of government. Cooper’s portrait necessarily ...”

“... or even ‘Far out!’ We don’t have the language for it. How do you tell the story of the conquest of space? How do you explain Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the provincial schoolteacher who calculated escape velocity, and proposed liquid-fuelled rockets and orbiting space stations, in the Russia of the tsars in 1898 – five years before the Wright ...”