“... century into a so-called underclass which is often the subject of baffled despair today both at home and abroad.’ The first stage in Mount’s argument is to trace how ‘the masses’ were invented, or reified, as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Early modern England had a complex, highly stratified social structure. Mount quotes a 1688 ...”

“... eat. Each of the addenda that concern us here could conceivably be published independently of its home text. This happens, particularly, to prolegomena. They are then said (by me) to be untethered. That is why some of the selections in The Book of Prefaces seem sufficient and complete in themselves and others feel fragmentary and rather lost. The selections ...”

“... sense of loss. For her the ancien régime never quite lost its glamour; she dearly loved a lord and her literary heroes were the Great Victorians. The power of the past, as childhood or simply nostalgia, was a recurring theme in her work, at odds with the modernity of her material; just as her sensitivity to women and her obsessive interest in female ...”

“... their imperfect legislation. We stand up for self-government, and oppose centralisation. When Lord Morpeth sought to expand the role of the state in the 1848 Public Health Act, he was abused for undermining Britain’s Saxon constitution. The ‘mental imbecility which is everywhere produced in the masses’ when one man in Whitehall is made responsible ...”

“... affairs was becoming both difficult and costly. Churchill, who left the War Ministry and succeeded Lord Milner as Colonial Secretary, had devised a cheaper strategy that he now imposed, using bombers and armoured cars without ‘eating up troops and money’. The air squadrons in Iraq launched one of history’s first full-scale aerial bombardments of a ...”

“... during the war does little to allay that fear. Once convinced of the need for some kind of home rule for Ireland, Churchill, who had played a leading role in the negotiations behind the Anglo-Irish treaty, was not keen on partition. He, Lloyd George and Lord Birkenhead had seen it as a temporary staging post on the ...”

“... his father wrote advising him to leave the girls in Glasgow rather than bring them to the parental home, but he didn’t receive the letter. His mother refused to call the children by their names and referred to them as the ‘little moonlight shades’. Difference in skin colour could provoke violence, sometimes affection, rarely indifference; often it ...”

“... strange not to have to press my way to such treasures through a great crowd of people. And it came home to me that there was once a time, not too long ago, when painting of this kind – The Dead Christ Supported by Four Angels from Rimini, the classic dialogue between Bellini and Mantegna’s versions of The Agony in the Garden, the grisaille Lamentation sent ...”

“... police cars speeding in the opposite direction towards the bank, he missed his evening flight home to Denver. He caught one the next day and went to stay at his girlfriend’s house. The day after that, his father, Norm, came to pick him up and a few minutes later their car was surrounded by an FBI Swat team. Alex was placed under arrest, with a gun to ...”

“... takes place in Lombardy: Griselda’s husband, Walter, is modelled in part on Bernabò Visconti, lord of Milan. Her story is more than a narrative about gender or a religious allegory; it is an object lesson in tyranny. Some tales are set even further afield: ‘The Squire’s Tale’ at the court of Genghis Khan; ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’ takes its ...”

“... less than three feet tall) alongside such frauds as the ‘Feejee Mermaid’. Lincoln felt at home with both elite and popular culture. Reynolds believes that his success as a politician stemmed from his engagement with the diverse cultural phenomena around him. For Reynolds, Lincoln really was ‘Abe’, the everyman depicted in his campaign ...”

“... on that (b) Gov. St Thomas’s Hospital; (c) Parliamentary candidate for distant seat; (d) stately-home-owner; (e) car-dealer; (f) fighting single-handed battles with Council, developing property etc. And yet if I was your (c) and (d), with just a little of (e) thrown in, there would be nothing creative going back; nothing in value for all that God has given ...”

“... in London during a shopping spree a few days earlier – suggesting that they expected to go home at the end of it. They were not fanatics, but ‘idiots’ who had been ‘sent here to die’. Towfiq Ibrahim al-Rashidi, their leader, came from a well-off family in the shipping business in Khorramshahr, an Iranian port across the Shatt al-Arab waterway ...”

“... Bazargan’s interim government distanced themselves from the students or called on them to go home. The only powerful supporter of the occupation was Khomeini. Through his son, he told the students: ‘You are in the right place. Stay put.’ He gave a fiery speech in support of them. The students then found themselves at the centre of a global ...”

“... DOING? That’s a fun question to ask now. A ringing in the ears, even outside the ears. Oh Lord, I should have known it – we were talking about the Hum. Everything you’d read about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, the X-Files would eventually cover. Was that show bad for us? For our minds? Maybe nine straight years of FEMA LIES ABOUT THE ...”