“... much of an actor, but he had a sleepy charm. He’d also seen men get shot, and explained to Daniel Cauchy, who played Paulo, that he would jump back, not forward, when he heard gunfire. Melville had no objections to working with a collaborator. ‘Like the former fighters,’ Labro said, ‘he liked to face his enemies … He was attracted to drifters ...”

“... more often than not, dull. Sir Mortimer Wheeler probably started the rot and then there was Glyn Daniel and his bow ties and today it’s Tony Robinson capering about professing huge excitement because of the uncovering of the (entirely predictable) foundations of a Benedictine priory at Coventry. His enthusiasm is anything but infectious and almost ...”

“... Butt, who became a regular dinner guest at Wilde’s house in Westland Row, and the novelists Charles Lever and Sheridan Le Fanu. He also travelled to London and then to Vienna and Berlin to pursue his medical studies; he visited Prague, Munich and Brussels. In 1843 he published Austria, Its Literary, Scientific and Medical Institutions, and in 1849 a ...”

“... old time’s sake?’ ‘You’re joking.’ He said the third book was by his former colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg. ‘This will be a complete smear,’ he said. ‘The guy is working from hatred of us and he will seek to make it as damaging as possible.’ ‘Embarrassing or damaging?’ ‘Both probably. He has chatroom stuff ...”

“... were to win the World Cup in 1930 and 1950) or Brazil (five and counting), the league official Charles Sutcliffe told an FA meeting in 1919, would be ‘magnifying the midget’. As Wilson nicely observes, their footballing isolationism allowed the British to be untroubled by Uruguay’s wins at the Olympics in 1924 and 1928 or in the inaugural World ...”

“... country’ as opposed to ‘The World’; ‘VC’, ‘Charlie’, or even, respectfully, ‘Sir Charles’, as stubbornly opposed to ‘friendlies’, subdivided into US, ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and ‘Free World’ – South Koreans, Thais, Filipinos, Australians, New Zealanders and, keeping low profiles somewhere, 30 each from Chiang ...”

“... in 1968. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, C. Wright Mills and René Dumont, Ernesto Sábato and Charles Bettelheim were all dazzled. For one visiting British delegation, Eric Hobshawm acted as Che’s translator.In the autumn of 1960, in search of economic agreements, Guevara made his first visit to the Soviet Union. Anderson reveals that there had already ...”

“... The next morning, Friday, 30 June, two weeks after the fire, was Paget-Brown’s last in office. Daniel Moylan, a Conservative councillor, called him at home at 7.45 a.m. ‘I will be calling publicly for you to go,’ Moylan said, ‘for trying to hold a meeting in private.’ Paget-Brown listened politely before saying he’d been put in an impossible ...”