“... eve of World War Two it still appeared secure. The war created a new situation in Indochina: after June 1940, the French administration sided with Vichy, then, once Tokyo had entered the war in 1941, fell under the overall control of the Japanese, who chose to rule the area indirectly through the French, a situation that prevailed right up to March ...”

“... So began a rampage around Europe from Hamburg to Petersburg and beyond. Could a common English rose have got away with the scenes and scandals Lola created? Much was forgiven her in the name of southern fire and the lovely, ‘obviously Spanish face’, in the words of a Dresden critic, one of a thrilled and horrified chorus spouting similar nonsense ...”

“... exiled, waving from twenty thousand leagues Under force eights the Lusitania, Hood, Tirpitz, Mary Rose lie barnacled, Cell-like binnacles of another life Lost to the world above but frozen here Among squid, mantas, coral, nameless shoals Writhing in a lurid, marine Somme Is the sea Scottish? What are the oceans’ flags? Britannia is ash on the surface of the ...”

“... opposed to Saudi Arabia in Yemen Qatar, among Palestinians and, more recently, in Syria. On 24 June it ran the story of Aitken interfering with witnesses alongside the Guardian cartoon by Austin showing two Gulf Arabs holding a sword marked ‘Truth’, and the caption, ‘They’re for Sale from the British.’ Between such extremes there is little room ...”

“... each recruiting and running its own partisans, SOE was an intelligence professional’s bad dream. June 1942: enter young Leo Marks. Having failed to convince the cryptographic services that he was suitable for the coding unit at Bletchley, but evincing a wayward brilliance that indicated he was too smart to do routine work, Marks was assigned to keep an eye ...”

“... politics.There was an echo of Murat’s laconic severity in Emmanuel Macron’s announcement on 9 June 2024: ‘I therefore dissolve the National Assembly.’ An hour earlier, exit polls had shown that his party, Renaissance, and its allies had been routed by the far right in elections for the European Parliament. The dissolution wasn’t a coup in the ...”

“... Empire Windrush, bringing eight hundred Caribbean passengers to Britain, docked at Tilbury on 21 June 1948, while the act was still going through Parliament. Here again, myth has fogged up the truth. It’s vaguely believed that Britain deliberately recruited Jamaicans to relieve the desperate postwar labour shortage. But the opposite was true. Although one ...”

“... since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ...”

“... with flowers, though Morozov’s visit was no concern of his. At last the great day arrived: 23 June 1902. At ten in the morning, Uncle Kostia and Chariton set out in a newly lacquered carriage to meet Morozov; the coachman was in the driving seat, wearing a pleated and embroidered waistcoat. I stayed behind, sitting on a bench in the sun, impatient to see ...”

“... such loads across enormous distances. A new type of fencing was clearly required.In 1873 Henry Rose, who farmed near Waterman Station in Illinois, thought of a new way to control a ‘breachy’ cow. (‘Breachy’ was Rose’s word.) He attached a wooden board, studded with sharp pieces of wire, to the cow’s head, so ...”

“... Denials of the reality of genocide mask a deeper, libidinal investment in its perpetration. In June 2024, the right-wing politician Moshe Feiglin took to Israeli television to invoke Hitler:As Hitler … once said, ‘I cannot live in this world if there is one Jew left in it.’ We will not be able to live in this land if one Islamo-Nazi is left in ...”

“... Frederick ‘the Great’. Walter Isaacson’s new study of Kissinger shows beyond doubt that he rose to power by intriguing for and against an ally, the South Vietnamese military junta, whom he had sworn to defend, and that in the process of covering his tracks, consolidating and extending his power and justifying his original duplicity, he was knowingly ...”

“... teams won even when they had no business winning, when they were outmatched – as they were in June three years ago, in the last game anyone thought he would play. I lived in Britain at the time and stayed up to watch that championship match on TV – a gesture towards my childhood. Embittered by basketball, I drank cold tea and pinched myself ...”

“... thoughts dwelling darkly on the Americans: one and a half million were stationed in the UK by June 1944, more than three million passed through Britain in the course of the war. The Americans were better paid, better dressed and appeared to have ready access to silk stockings, sweets and cigarettes. Not a few soldiers feared their wives or girlfriends had ...”

“... war he kept getting sick or wounded on the eve of great battles that decimated his regiment, and rose to the Labour leadership because most of the obvious contenders had lost their seats in the National Government landslide of 1931. Apart from sheer luck, what changed matters was his ascension to the rank of major in the war and the postwar Labour tide that ...”