“... monumental legislation and jump into aeroplanes to make visits to foreign powers. The Second World War immensely accelerated the pace of this change, and the reputation of Baldwin suffered, not merely because he was tarred with appeasement and unemployment, but because he represented a style and philosophy of government that was largely incomprehensible to the ...”

“... secret agent in plain view, Fénéon led multiple lives in the 1880s and 1890s. He worked at the War Ministry (of all places), and quickly rose to be its head clerk. At the same time he was also active as an art critic, explicating Neo-Impressionism when it emerged in 1886 (he coined the term); and after Seurat died young in 1891, Fénéon surveyed his ...”

“... the military coup in Niger on 26 July, the president of Nigeria, Bolá Ahmed Tinubú, threatened war if his ‘brother’ wasn’t restored to power. Mohamed Bazoum wasn’t restored and Tinubú didn’t invade, though he did cut off his country’s electricity supply to Niger. He also closed the thousand-mile border between the two countries to commercial ...”

“... Humboldtian language about the spiritual and higher ends of education! After the Second World War, Hutchins’s emotional energy was directed towards warnings about the dangers of nuclear research. Ironically, he was President at Chicago when the nation’s first atomic reactor was constructed in secret beneath the west stands of Stagg Field as part of ...”

“... as Britain exploited the manpower and natural resources of the empire during the Second World War. But the idea of importing colonial labour into metropolitan Britain, let alone the fear of uncontrolled and voluntary ‘coloured immigration’, had scarcely entered the establishment mind.It was the lack of that anxiety which made possible what Patel calls ...”

“... much against the great imperial structures that disappeared piece by piece after the Second World War; now, after years of degeneration following the white man’s departure, the empires that ruled Africa and Asia don’t seem quite as bad. The perplexingly affirmative work of Niall Ferguson and David Armitage scants, if it doesn’t actually trivialise, the ...”

“... for Britain to take over the Congo, Angola and Mozambique ‘at this stage’. During the civil war in the Congo in 1961 several Rhodesian whites clearly had their eye on Katanga as a possible new province. Expansionary British imperialism wasn’t quite dead. Even less dead was the idea that white men were the only people who could rule black people ...”

“... Towards the end of 1688 the Dutch Republic tried to bounce Britain into war with France by main military force. The chief plotter was a scion of the royal house of Orange-Nassau and nephew and son-in-law to the British king, but he had none of the poise and magnificence that were supposed to go with a royal pedigree ...”

“... scruffy. The two men are from very different backgrounds, though without much contrast of social class: Adamsberg is from Béarn in the south-west while Danglard’s ancestors were miners in the east. Adamsberg remains earthy, thinking more productively when near water and stone. His touch has a strongly calming effect, on people but also on ...”

“... as well known as he should be or (we’re safe to assume) would like to be. Tim Shipman in All Out War, to date the fullest and most reliable account of the campaign, describes him as ‘one of the most eloquent’ of the Tory Europhobes. Political uncertainty has never been his problem. In his various capacities as think-tank director, Daily Telegraph ...”

“... pastime’ of baseball, the Western is a sacred part of America’s post-Civil War national mythology – a shared language, a unifying set of symbols and metaphors, and a paradigm of (mainly male) behaviour. But where baseball is all form, the Western is heavy on content. Essentially, as Philip French once observed, it is ‘America ...”

“... hierarchical rigidities of feudalism which disfigured early modern Europe. Thus in the long run class resentments did not surface in the United States, which avoided the polarities of Right and Left. Instead, political parties evolved as broad non-ideological coalitions, with ‘wheeling and dealing, log-rolling and compromise’ the standard idiom of the ...”

“... size of cars. The streets are Haussmann-wide: Pyongyang was almost totally destroyed in the Korean War of 1950-53 and rebuilt by Soviet architects. Their influence is most pronounced on Kwangbok and Changchun Streets, which are as wide as bomber landing strips, with buildings a kilometre wide and a dozen storeys high running alongside them. I desperately ...”

“... the growth of American power had failed. He died six weeks later. At the end of the Second World War, many thought that a lasting peace would be possible only if we learned to manage the world economy. The fact that the worst war in history had followed shortly on the heels of the worst economic crisis seemed to confirm ...”

“... coverage of Iran epitomised these attitudes. Khomeini, medieval, despotic, wages ‘holy war’ upon the world in an attempt to drag his homeland back into the seventh century AD. The unstated assumption, of course, is that Westernisation equals modernity, and that developing countries must needs transform themselves into ‘mini-Americas’. Any ...”