“... and Austro-Hungarian did not, that was because Bolshevik internationalism, which was genuine, held it together. Under Stalin, however the logic of an imperial space controlled from Moscow took over, and an earlier Ukrainian nationalism, never general but equally never extinguished, came to acquire a new intensity, becoming more anti-Russian than, say ...”

“... LEAs were never compelled to turn their schools into comprehensives, only a few (like Kent) held out, and there was little sign of widespread opposition to the change. The comprehensives, however, simplified the system without solving the problem. The Labour Party had no clear idea how the schools should be organised: whether, for example, children ...”

“... trade often enough for the correlation of their prices to be measured: most investors simply held them until they matured. Intuitively, though, it seemed conceivable that defaults in bundles of mortgages or other forms of consumer debt could be quite highly correlated, because of the likely influence of factors such as the overall unemployment level, and ...”

“... I take a turn for the worse. No human dignity is left; in a red dawn, I stagger across the room, held by a tiny Filipina nurse, my heart hammering, unspeakable fluids pouring from me. Hours later, when my heart has subsided and I am propped up and reading the Observer, I think this moment is still happening, still being enacted; I live in two simultaneous ...”

“... old man had once been La Zambinella, and that the fortune of the household in which the party was held came from La Zambinella’s earnings as a castrato much in demand. Martha Feldman’s The Castrato, rich in scholarship and filled with subtle analysis, is one of several books that have appeared on the subject of castrati in recent years. In The Queen’s ...”

“... publication, he was nominated for election as an associate of the Linnean Society. According to David Attenborough, Lear is ‘the finest bird artist there ever was’. His drawings were primarily intended to help scientists identify species, yet his birds are exhibitionists as well as exhibits, always more than an instance that confirms a rule. The same ...”

“... an advocate, at the Oxford Union, of the birch and stocks; Chris Huhne, later energy secretary in David Cameron’s cabinet; Jeremy Hunt, the current health secretary. Johnson liked teaching and had a taste for the rough and tumble. His great day was not as a young man who worried about apartheid, or a feisty libertarian outnumbered by big French Stalinists ...”

“... failed to respond to this compliment with any valuable acknowledgment, Thomson, Aaron Hill and David Mallet prepared satirical verses on unsatisfactory patrons to preface the second edition of ‘Winter’. Compton stepped in in time (with civility and 20 guineas), and Thomson judiciously persuaded his friends to tone down their verses, or at least to ...”

“... priest and doctor. Dr Rabelais, like Father Rabelais, comforts the afflicted. A Platonising bishop held that the surname Rabelais, by mystical Hebrew etymology, truly means ‘Prince of Mockers’. In 1818 Hazlitt ended his introductory lecture ‘On the English Comic Writers’ not with Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Congreve, Sterne or Garrick but with ...”

“... Guided at times by Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, Eugene Genovese, Eric Foner and David Brion Davis conceived slavery as a mode of organising labour, as well as a system of racial domination. This led to the recognition that advocates of ‘free labour’ had economic as well as humanitarian reasons for opposing slavery, and that the Northern ...”

“... responsible for Julian’s fondness for country squirely pursuits. There’s a good description by David Garnett of Julian beagling at Cambridge: he was ‘far bigger, noisier and more raggedly dressed than any of his companions … bursting with happy excitement … Late in the afternoon Julian turned up with his ragged clothes torn to tatters, which flapped ...”

“... and he was one of the poets and actors known as the Generación del 27 – the first meeting was held in Seville in 1927. Hugh said he would pull out some books from his shelves; we would talk about all of that when we next met. When would that be? I thought for a second. Lunch on Sunday? When we said goodbye, Hugh would have rung my mother upstairs to tell ...”

“... the death and capture of many more Americans, as well as endangering the lives of those already held captive’. The message was devastating to Nixon’s political goals. Massive bombing of North Vietnam, enough to keep the Communists from overrunning Saigon until after the American election, was the only way Nixon would be able to sell what he was calling ...”

“... Emperors of late years have very much enlarged their dominions,’ yet the ‘colonies’ were held ‘by force’ and subject to extortion. The people lived cold, dark, hyperborean lives similar to those endured by the Scots. Their cabins were made out of tree trunks, with moss stuffed into the cracks. ‘Every house hath a pair of stairs that lead up ...”

“... about maintaining a lead over his competitors – securing unique access to particular collections held in private hands, for instance, and taking on editorial commissions which would effectively remove archival material from wider access until he had brought them to publication. He was, one of his students remarked, ‘fiercely competitive, though he usually ...”