“... her recent batch of ‘five most perfectly lovely airletters’, which promise the arrival of a home-made cake and a home-knit sweater. He goes on to warn her of his latest present in return, having made various attempts to procure acceptable underwear for her (not black! not pantaloons!) on his regiment’s first arrival ...”

“... But the chime, a full Westminster chime, was so appealing that we talked about it on the way home and later asked Mrs H. to put it on one side. Today we collect it and it looks every bit as dull as we remember, but now on the table behind the living-room door it seems very much at home. And the chime is of such ...”

“... in the Pacific, still wary of the slaughter that would surely attend an invasion of the Japanese home islands, and it wasn’t likely that another landing on the Atlantic coast of Europe could be mounted for several years. British and Canadian carpet-bombing of German cities continued, but ever since the Russians had been dealt an almost fatal blow by the ...”

“... from this technique.’ It fell to the Royal College of Physicians to offer an olive branch. Lord Moran, its president, asked the Minister to make it clear that he would amend the Act to ensure that a system of salaries would not be implemented, suggesting that, in return, doctors would support the NHS. Bevan agreed, and an amending Act was drawn ...”

“... Felix Krull which Mann wrote the following year he portrayed himself very precisely as hotel guest Lord Kilmarnock (Lord Strathbogie in other editions) who wished to employ the personal services of the waiter Felix Krull. Krull turned him down. Mann let no experience go to waste: being in love with Klaus Heuser was the ...”

“... which is to be – as the plays recurrently tell us – ‘not altogether fool, my lord’. He transforms a native looseness of culture, a romanticism always available, into liberty rather than licence. Rather than narrowing and ‘making it new’, Shakespeare found range and richness in the intellectual spectrum of his time: he found more ...”

“... with dark skin and a shock of coal-black hair, shy and socially awkward, my father returned home to the village of Hadzor in Worcestershire, just outside Droitwich Spa, to spend the summer hunting for a job within commuting distance of his father’s rectory. Some time in the 19th century the Church Commissioners had combined Hadzor and its equally ...”

“... diplomat. Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, were in London, having been forbidden to return home by their imprisoned father. The burden of trying to save her father’s life fell on Benazir and her mother, Nusrat, and the courage they exhibited won them the silent respect of a frightened majority. They refused to cave in to General Zia’s military ...”

“... title of a subsequent work, The Man in the Red Hat. During his final year of life he also made a home video, La Pudeur et l’impudeur, which was screened on television a month after his death. Yet another Aids book, Cytomégalovirus, was published at this time and a posthumous novel, Le Paradis, appeared at the beginning of 1993. As an heir to Sade and ...”

“... Later, a chatter starts when the parcel-carrying women crowd in to warm up for the long drive home into the bogs. In their wake comes the gabble of businessmen like boys released from school. After them the shoulder-to-shoulder nightlong battalions rising and rising to a roar booming like the last fifty yards of the Grand National. You couldn’t hear a ...”

“... face the fact that Cuba was not the place he’d remembered. In February 1971 when he ‘returned home’ – not the essential home, but Havana, the adopted home of his devising – he felt himself ‘a different man, in a different country’. A ‘Soviet starch had been ironed into the ...”

“... the puzzle of what exactly you’re supposed to take with you if you might never go back to your home, or if you might die at any moment. I tried to pack my things several times, but in the end we left with our hands almost empty.Before the war, I was a writer. Today, on the ninth day, I feel unable to string two words together. It’s hard to believe that ...”

“... Zubeidat, after thwarted efforts to translate documents for human rights groups, became a home care worker, later a beautician. With the exception of Dzhohkar, the undoubtedly bright children began to stumble in their new surroundings. Zubeidat, who believed Tamerlan ‘perfect’ and ‘destined for greatness’, no doubt instilled a great deal of ...”

“... However, to large swathes of the left, the idea of doing so has remained anathema (the former lord mayor of Sheffield ruled it out, in his ‘Ten Commandments’ for the city). Tories are comedy material, like Rik Mayall’s fictional creation of the late 1980s, Alan B’Stard MP. Googling ‘Tory MP’ throws up a rich array of associations, from ...”

“... and it is to make-believe identities in the past rather than the future that we look to find a home for our ideal selves. The return to history, under this optic, appears as a displaced expression of contemporary utopianism. If there is a single issue which has made history seem more relevant, and more contentious, in recent years it is the emergence of ...”