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“... group of military historians which has flourished in this country since the Second World War, John Keegan is outstanding. His talents are remarkable: a wide-ranging and speculative mind; clarity in analysis; a deep understanding of the military community; and enviable descriptive gifts to ensure that his books will be acceptable to that wide ...”

“... political settlement was the only option for our struggle with Israel, but after the Gulf War, and Arafat’s disastrous alliance with Saddam Hussein, I had lost confidence in his ability to represent our national interests. The Oslo Accords were the result of his crippled, but still potent, position, of which the Israelis took full ...”

“... at least an accumulation of items of narrative evidence – for an overt, vigorous and conscious class struggle in the Greek cities, in which the temporary dominance of one class could often only be achieved by violence, frequently with the aid of outsiders. There is a major historical theme here, attempted, for instance ...”

“... as indeed they did. But, as Hitchens again points out, Orwell was gloomily foreseeing the Cold War when most Tories were still hailing Britain’s gallant Soviet ally. And if 1984 is an anti-socialist tract, it seems odd that its author was calling for a united socialist states of Europe on the eve of publishing it. In any case, you do not disown your ...”

“... and merchant navies. Now, at 46, he was employed by the government at Woolwich Arsenal ‘making war medals’, which sounds dismal and more like a postwar employment scheme than a real job. The only two living descendants of this household are me and my younger cousin Geraldine, who has made much more effort with family history. ‘Mars Avenue?’ I ...”

“... Reflecting on the cultural consequences of the Civil War, the Southern literary critic, Lewis Simpson, wonders how Emerson, the quintessential New England intellectual, could have failed to understand that ‘in their progress as the representation of the idea of emancipation, Americans had become engaged in a bloody emancipation of a second American republic – a modern nation-state – from the political order that, with nostalgic affection, would come to be thought of as the “Old Republic” ...”

“... economy, the insecurity and uncertainties of a drifting Japanese urban population in the post-war years. And, in the last sentence, a purely visual sense of distance from a character, brought about as if by the lens of a camera, coincides with an odd but touching intrusion of closeness, kinship and ‘sympathy’. In An Artist of the Floating ...”

“... is to study Irish nationalist perceptions of Unionists, especially the Protestant working class; it is to study the tortuous, tense and ill-defined relationship between socialism and Irish nationalism; and it is to study the role of Catholicism in Irish social and cultural life. There are few historical figures in whom the dilemmas, conundrums and ...”

“... 50 per cent of us, if we were male, and 40 per cent, if we were female, reached a higher social class than our parents, against less than 20 per cent who went in the other direction. It was an exceptional climb towards opportunity and prosperity that for a time looked like the way life would always be.On a Monday in late August 1956, somewhere around two ...”

“... demeanour suggests – replied: ‘Well, you ought to know how hard it is to lead the working class, Malachy.’ The Official IRA emerged after the IRA split in 1969, soon after the Troubles began; the other, more prominent group that came into being was the Provisional IRA. Those who joined the Provos felt that in the 1960s the IRA had moved too far from ...”

“... come across the crypto-Etonian columnist with the Tyneside accent and the warm loyalty to working-class experience, or the swaggering Texan brute of a newshound, festooned with body-armour and film pouches, who began life as the only child of a Harvard professor of literature. Why this guising is peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon press world is hard to explain. It ...”

“... in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign; a recession from 1580 to 1610, and again in the Civil War decade, followed by a new advance in the 1650s, and a slowing down after 1660. The initial rapid rise may perhaps be attributed to a new emphasis on Bible-reading; the other fluctuations probably derive from economic factors – though the stagnation after ...”