“... had acquaintances in the literary world (her correspondents included H.G. Wells, Bryher, H.D. and John Cowper Powys), most of her life was lived in obscurity, and her friendships were mainly epistolary ones. Her aversion to having her picture taken and her reluctance to submit to interviews (she believed that readers should ‘keep their illusions’ about ...”

“... to the Spanish courts viewed this exotic society, in which, as late as the 15th century, King John II of Castile had a Muslim bodyguard, and where, throughout the late Middle Ages, Spanish kings employed Jews as tax collectors and even confidential advisers, is an intriguing question. For by the end of the 14th century Spain was an anomaly in its ...”

“... thirties. He wasn’t experimental, at least not in the beguiling fashion of the far better known John Ashbery, who combines the exaltation of Wallace Stevens with the shrugging insouciance of Frank O’Hara in order to come up with poems as expressive and as inscrutable as Reverdy’s. If Merrill was experimental, then it was in the way Bach played with ...”

“... I asked him if he would give away the prizes and draw the raffle at an Anti-Nazi League fête in North London. He was keen to do so, spent the whole afternoon at the fête, joined in the six-a-side football (he was terrifyingly furious with me for missing a penalty) and when I thanked him, he said he should be thanking me. ‘It’s not often I do something ...”

“... seems marvellous, when all the countries surrounding Africa are so forward in comparison,’ John Speke, discoverer of the source of the White Nile, observed. Very much a man of his time, Speke was necessarily less aware than we are today of the diversity of African societies, their extraordinary artistic wealth, and the antiquity of their trade with the ...”

“... difficulty of keeping one’s hat in place while performing the nine prostrations of the kowtow. John Bell, a Scottish doctor attached to a Russian embassy c.1720, didn’t enjoy the way sheep were cooked, but was fascinated by the acrobats and jugglers. He reckoned that Russia was the only nation with a fair chance of conquering China, though there ...”

“... and 1640, the Empire of the kings of Spain stretched from the Philippines to the shores of the North Sea. The 19th-century Russian Empire covered more territory and the British had a larger population, but no other European empire was spread so widely or embraced so many different peoples. This behemoth has conventionally been called the Spanish Empire. At ...”

“... soon after his sister was born, then his father, and Braly ended up in a Catholic boarding-school north of Seattle. Together with a cluster of friends, he began to steal. The boys collected milk and soda bottles from the dump to turn in for deposits, but when the supply of empties dried up, they nicked bottles from neighbourhood garages, then progressed to ...”

“... says, he learned painting from a certain ‘Jean-Babeuf Audubon’, presumably a near relative of John James Audubon. On returning to England, he ‘lived the life of a rat’ for twenty years; he was eventually arrested in Bristol, accused of forgery and transported to Van Diemen’s Land. After causing maximum offence with a series of satirical paintings ...”

“... In the movie, however, it provides the occasion for one of Hollywood’s happy endings, in which John Quincy Adams moves the Supreme Court to a recognition of human rights by eloquently invoking the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, this never happened. The justices did, indeed, send the Africans home, but their decision turned on maritime law and ...”

“... of an equally penniless Devonian such as Ralegh. But one may be more sensitive to these nuances north of the Tweed. More serious, perhaps, is the omission of any reference to the most important Ralegh discovery in recent years, Mark Nicholls’s publication in 1995 of the prosecution summary of the evidence in the Main Plot trial of 1603. This is not the ...”

“... in 1781, and that of the 5000 inhabitants exposed to infection, 99.5 per cent caught the disease. John Enders and his young associate T.C. Peebles were the first to grow measles virus in the test tube in 1954, using the tissue culture techniques developed by Enders and his colleagues in the late 1940s. Much good that did him at Harvard. Even though he was ...”

“... of mental vigour and resolve to overcome obstacles, which is indispensable to successful war.’ John Colville, Churchill’s secretary, recorded that ‘Churchill tried his hardest to elicit the general’s views and was met with the silence of shyness,’ while Wavell thought Churchill’s tactical ideas had got stuck somewhere around the time of the Boer ...”

“... stickers urging people to help rebuild the country, but in 1999 a new rebel group emerged in the north: Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd). What Taylor had once seen in Doe Lurd now saw in Taylor: a regime which thrived on violence and corruption and which would have to be removed by force. The insurgents gained ground gradually over ...”

“... doesn’t shine’ is pure ‘Carry on up the Corner Flag’. Later, Kuper interviews the Preston North End winger Tom Finney about the Cup Final of 1941, when Preston beat Arsenal. Wasn’t it odd, he asks, to play the final in bombed-out London? ‘I wasn’t all that interested in the war when I was playing,’ Finney answers. ‘I was only 18. And the ...”