“... 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 ...”

“... period. All the great Regency writers were aware that the throne was vacant, that constitutions at home and abroad were unsettled – and that the Prince Regent seemed a Lord of Misrule: they did not know when the Great Reform Bill would be passed, as prologue to the stable reign of Victoria. In times like these, Abstract ...”

“... domination – could serve the English state overseas. Thomas Harriot, a dangerous atheist at home, could use his ‘Machiavellian’ insights to show the Virginian settlers that the Indians could be cowed not only by direct force but by the power of their own imaginations, by myths such as the nightmarish notion that epidemics were caused by ‘invisible ...”

“... and she turns immediately to the Bible which ‘fell open near the beginning. She read: “And the Lord set a mark upon Cain.” ’ The scar on Stephen’s face (the result of a wartime wound), which becomes livid at times of stress, functions as that mark. Despite Hall’s attempts to court the sympathy of heterosexuals by writing about a textbook case of ...”

“... flattering traits. Though he was an amusing companion, nobody ever called him a warm man. Even at home, he left himself at home; the depths only show in what he became on screen. Critics have paid their respects over the years with an admiration that has often seemed to catch the admirer by surprise: Otis Ferguson, a ...”

“... and the tactical strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces. He knows well how to bring home the significance of the political resolutions that gave the war its visible turning points. Most historians of the war have been able to do reasonable justice to episodes like these, but Sumption’s narrative has other and more individual strengths. It is ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the way he earned it: Stevenson lived like a genius and he died like one, 12 thousand miles from home. Every aspect of his talent was clouded in Romantic ether – the cough, the dreams, the night-sweats – and determined by the hold of memory and the pulse of freedom in his Scottish heart. Paler than Chatterton, camper than Shelley, the only son of 17 ...”

“... loneliest years, a figure on the box in the evening and in the papers in the morning – a kind of home-town weather, looked up regardless of where a traveller happens to find himself. He inspired me, among other things, to try my own hand at professional basketball, though I lacked the talent to play in America. In that first aimless summer after ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... between 1720 and 1725, for instance, with the Cave of Spleen in The Rape of the Lock (1712-17), home of the goddess of bad moods and sick fancies:Here in a grotto, shelter’d close from air,And screen’d in shades from day’s detested glare,She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.The cave is just as rich in surreal ...”

“... be in a kindergarten,’ a Canadian nurse exclaimed to David Jones, aged twenty, awaiting transfer home in July 1916 after being wounded in Mametz Wood. Even a decade later, photographs show a wary child or an understudy for an adult. Prudence Pelham, the staunchest of his extended female fellowship, described him as ‘completely unsexed’. He himself felt ...”

“... with (Schwartz’s childhood friends called her Lady Macbeth). Harry often abandoned the family home for periods and in 1923 packed up for good, moving to Chicago. Afterwards, worried that Delmore was becoming a ‘violin’ of his mother’s ‘sick emotions’, he offered to buy his son from Rose for $75,000. (She said no.) One of the terms of their ...”

“... This evening his routine had been broken. He had not taken tea with his mother. She was not home. She had gone to grieve with a friend who had just lost her husband. He had gone to the funeral yesterday but his mother would go every day for three days, then every Thursday for three Thursdays, then on the fortieth day, then on every anniversary. Although ...”