“... to repeat their lèse-majesté. David Landes takes the story from the scholar of Islam, Michael Cook. It is, for him, a moral tale. Autocracies squeeze, steal and demean. ‘Only societies with room for multiple initiatives,’ he insists, ‘from below more than from above, can think in terms of a growing pie.’ That is why they become rich. And that is ...”

“... her daily ballet exercises. Domestic routine – thanks in large measure to Ruby Weller, their cook and housekeeper, who stayed with Lopokova for 50 years – made Keynes even more productive: he wrote a 20,000-word memoir of his economics teacher, Alfred Marshall, in their first two months at Tilton. Lopokova’s imaginative insights and spontaneous ...”

“... author also of Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song and a biography of Cliff Richard – can’t be unaware of the implied contrast with the Paschal lamb of Exodus 12.46 and the fulfilment of the Scripture in the Gospel of John, chapter 19 (‘Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified ...”

“... Islington,’ one of them remarks, ‘where you could sit on your toilet with your door open and cook your breakfast at the same time.’ Cathy Come Home inaugurates social realism’s most enduring narrative form, the melodrama of circumstance.By​ the late 1960s, Loach and Garnett were ready to move on from the BBC, where the liberal regime overseen by ...”

“... Jack Yeats and some poems, a few of them masterpieces of their kind, he wrote books on Eliot and Richard Aldington for the same series as Beckett’s book on Proust, the publication of which he arranged. He later wrote a monograph on Poussin and was director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963. McGreevy flits in and out of the lives of ...”

“... so much heat that even though lying under icy water with its belly cut wide open, its bones cook. Ackerman writes telegrams which, taken together, broadcast an oddly calmative modern message. For if the new nature is an order of extremes, a palaestra of prodigies, in the practical sphere this becomes a prioritising of important over less important, of ...”

“... an Arriva bus and quits Leeds via Hunslet, which also appears more or less obliterated since Richard Hoggart, who described its working-class culture so memorably in The Uses of Literacy, grew up there. Next comes Woodlesford, where McKie gazes round for any trace of the rhubarb for which the place was once well known, and we chug onwards to ...”

“... appointment to the Ptolemies, captured by Pompey and sold as a slave at Rome: ‘he started as a cook, then became a sedan-bearer, and finally joined Augustus’ circle of friends.’ Apparently, Augustus told him to watch his mouth. None of Timagenes’ many books survives, but he may have influenced Trogus, who was epitomised by Justin, who does. At any ...”

“... them for their preparatory school.But things go wrong with the education of her eldest charge, Richard.Richard was a beautiful child and, despite a proper interest in and aptitude for all the importances of outdoor life, there were times when he would lean in silence against Mrs Brock as she played the piano, or even ...”

“... and Greggs. One evening I drove down a dark country lane on the edge of Wyberton to the home of Richard Austin, who led the Bypass Independents to victory in 2007. He’s in his eighties now. His wife, Alison, is also involved in local politics as an independent. She would have chaired the 2017 meeting that rubber-stamped the start of housebuilding on the ...”

“... the German nation . . . Many fine babies were begotten and born in this house.’ He interviewed Richard Strauss for the army magazine Stars and Stripes and listened to him praising Hans Frank, who ran Auschwitz, since Frank, unlike Hitler, ‘really appreciated my music’. He met Heinrich’s first wife, who had been released from Terezín, and her ...”

“... professor; he had been a friend of Wagner’s and parties in the house were attended by Mahler and Richard Strauss. ‘One has no thought of Jewishness in regard to these people,’ Thomas wrote to his brother, ‘one senses only culture.’ Once married, Thomas and Katia Mann lived in splendour in Munich. ‘The Manns,’ Reich-Ranicki wrote, ‘would go to ...”

“... of 16, which is unremarkable except that next to Hübner (and also in the Volkssturm) is Peter Cook. He is looking at Goebbels with the ghost of a smile and is much as he was around 1970, his face angular and handsome which it was before the drink took hold. Perhaps to someone who hadn’t known him the resemblance would seem less remarkable. To me it’s ...”

“... of a century arranging the ingredients for the catastrophe. Lenin said of Stalin that ‘this cook will give us peppery dishes,’ and for all the talk of nation-building, democracy promotion, multiculturalism and tribal recognition, globalisation à la Nato has been a peppery dish. There were several chefs involved: Bill and Hillary Clinton, George ...”

“... a whirling dervish, she lost the thread of one existence and found another.’ It’s as if Sir Richard Burton had set out to write a Mills and Boon romance. Brick Lane truly comes alive only when its male characters, particularly the older ones, enter the fray. This isn’t just because they are more gabby and engaged, less likely to be sitting at home ...”