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“... Belloc has enabled conscientious students of history to see both sides. He is delighted to find Norman Stone, at the time a professor of modern history at Oxford, writing in the Sunday Times that he considers Belloc a more perceptive historian than G.M. Trevelyan: ‘I think that, in the end, I shall go to Trevelyan’s enemies, Hilaire Belloc or Lord ...”

“... that the KA is a pub (I did know that), then you’re lost. ‘The Dean’ (of Peterhouse, Edward Norman) and ‘the Chancellor’ (of Oxford, Harold Macmillan) are not identified. How many readers will translate ‘My Successor … is not in much favour with your successor … owing to his lack of assiduity in his attendance beneath the portrait of Queen ...”

“... Front or about the experiences of ordinary men and women, thanks to the work of historians such as Norman Stone, Hew Strachan, Annette Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau. With Cataclysm, David Stevenson draws on much recent work to provide a comprehensive account of the war, with a welcome interest both in the non-European theatres and in the home ...”

“... never been broken’. This has to prevail against the modish view of technology as behemoth. As Norman Stone once wrote of Speer, ‘beyond a certain level, technical matters cannot be separated from morality.’ The latter’s claims remain importunate. A good deal of academic effort is devoted to trying to argue people ...”

“... the authentic coinage. In case that seems like homophobophobia on my part, let us remember what Norman Stone foresaw for Denmark when it legalised gay marriage in 1989: ‘Its population will consist of golden oldies watching porn videos. The only people to get married will be the gays, and the only people to have children will be the Kurdish ...”

“... liked to think that he had routed the critics, a judgment which has been endorsed, in the main, by Norman Stone. Others still say that Taylor was completely wrong. Whatever the truth of the matter, one thing at least is clear. Before Taylor, the origins of the Second World War were taken for granted. After Taylor, they were recognised as a major ...”

“... Raymond Aron died of a heart attack on 17 October, a few weeks after the publication of his memoirs. He died on the steps of the Paris courthouse where he had been testifying on behalf of his friend Bertrand de Jouvenel, who had been violently attacked in a book on French Fascism. The case was not a simple one, as de Jouvenel had said and done some imprudent things in the Thirties ...”

“... sleep. Her breasts were honeycombs and her womb a hive. The Queen in Rapture A summer of storms. A stone-built Norman church. Hives in the graveyard. The priest an incomer who preached only sin and redemption. There you have it. Oh, and on one of the corbels a bee in flight, flanked by a jack-in-the-green and a ...”

“... he doesn’t seem to have been the monster that some critics have made him out to be (not least Norman Stone, reviewing The Twilight of Comintern in these pages in 1982). He appears to have been a dutiful and helpful teacher, though he could also be an implacable enemy. If arrogance and bloody-mindedness were strong features of his personality, they ...”

“... small; Hugh Trevor-Roper has called it ‘a masterly work of profound research and reflection’, Norman Stone praised Bunting as ‘a superb chronicler’, Alan Clark admires her ‘careful research’. No doubt her readers have been dazzled, as I was, by her self-confidence. But there are, I think, more profound reasons why no one (in Britain) has ...”

“... not in the forefront, but the new breed of historian – Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and Norman Stone – all came to prominence under Mrs Thatcher and share some of her characteristics. Having found that taking the contrary view pays dividends they seem to make this the tone of their customary discourse. A sneer is never far away and there’s ...”

“... weeks by the start of a Second Age, with the victory of William of Normandy at Hastings. By 1100, Norman princes ruled not only England and most of Wales, with much of Scotland and Ireland soon to follow, but also Apulia and Calabria in southern Italy, and Sicily. They had started the process of picking off parts of the Byzantine Empire, and a ...”

“... Robert Stone was born in August 1937, nine months after Don DeLillo and three – we’re told – after Thomas Pynchon. Dog Soldiers, his second novel, made his name in the mid-1970s, and since then he has stubbornly held his ground on the upper slopes of American literary life. Fellowships, prizes, grants and commissions have rarely been in short supply, and his later books – from A Flag for Sunrise to Damascus Gate – have been much admired ...”

“... are interesting or, for that matter, beautiful. Most castles, for instance, are ugly; almost all Norman buildings, especially Norman cathedrals, are large and little else. The aesthetics of Heritage History come into play here. Caernarvon Castle is an imperial monstrosity; the nave of Durham Cathedral is colonial brutalism ...”

“... Dutch master which pushes Freddie Montgomery over the edge into homicide. Like Banville, Howard Norman and Katharine Weber write about stealing Dutch paintings, and they share a similar attitude to them. For them, Dutch art represents modesty of subject-matter, and precision – ‘the details’ is a phrase of some importance in both novels, and both are ...”