“... hills. On the valley floor sits a group of five single-storey concrete sheds with corrugated iron roofs, each opening onto a broad grassy enclosure. Dotted among the trees in the enclosures is an array of apparatus: platforms, posts, tripods, hammocks, swings. The enclosure in front of me also has a pool, and a bridge spanning a hoop of tunnel. At 2 ...”

“... of Species promoted a new theory that scandalously linked all of organic life together through an iron law of competition and extinction. Meanwhile, the factories of the industrial revolution were issuing forth new, smoke-belching, roaring creations. The wild violence of much early palaeoart, with its images of frenzied consumption and environmental ...”

“... Whoroscope, billed as ‘Mr Samuel Beckett’s first separately published work’. Cunard and Richard Aldington had announced a competition – with a prize of £10 and publication – for ‘the best poem on TIME’. The best poem not about time might have been more of a challenge, but the young Beckett, for once letting optimism get the better of ...”

“... state. It is not its only crisis. British books on the subject fail singularly to discuss the ‘iron cage of bondage’ which the social state has created: that is to say, the process of bureaucratisation which has de-personalised the most personal service of the modern state. Few functions of the modern state are more miserably associated with ...”

“... began to stir, Colin and Mary were woken by the methodical chipping of steel tools against the iron barges which moored by the hotel café pontoon.’ Colin and Mary Who? Or rather, since they turn out not to be married, Colin Who and Mary Who? There is much that we learn about them, but never these simple assurances. The Comfort of Strangers: this, and ...”

“... paper, ‘is that faith, patriotism . . . the patriarchal family, primordial tribal unity, iron discipline and the complete lack of so-called modern civilisation have . . . become such an invincible force that even the seemingly invincible British have begun to tremble.’ But the Left, too, loved the Boers. Lenin supported their struggle against ...”

“... he has written a novel called The Memorial; lives with his mother and a younger brother called Richard; works on a movie; has fashionable but uncontroversial left-wing ideas (he speaks himself of his ‘parlour socialism’); confesses to small acts of cowardice. But we know far more about the quality of his attention to the world than we know about ...”

“... UDF was to blame for its violence against Inkatha, Inkatha were not goodies either. The work of Richard Cobb should have made us expect all revolutions to be shot through with villainy, banality and irony. For every saintly Mandela or heroic Steve Biko there were always likely to be several murderous Harry Gwalas, fraudulent Allan Boesaks and others who ...”

“... in 1678 and became the first Englishman to make the journey to Mecca and return, long before Richard Burton’s celebrated voyage in 1853. Pitts converted to Islam, as so many in his situation did, and although he remained a slave until 1693, when he managed to escape, he seems to have been treated well and to have formed a largely favourable view of his ...”

“... personality in various interludes and ‘interchapters’. He is, he admits, no Holmesian (Richard, not Sherlock) ‘pursuer’ of his subject. But he offers a vivid account of a visit he made to Kensal Green Cemetery as he began work on his biography. It was December (the month in which the novelist died): Thackeray’s grave on the south side, where ...”

“... yet somehow distinctive, relatively easy to identify (Norman Foster, along with his former partner Richard Rogers, is English for Architecture). No wonder corporate and political leaders hire this stylish practice: there is a mirroring of self-images here, at once technocratic and innovative, that suits client and firm alike. ‘Foster’ offers an ...”

“... planes unloaded, we fell down Buried together, unmarried men and women; Not crown of thorns, not iron, not Lombard crown, Not grilled and spindle spires pointing to heaven Could save us. Raise us, Mother, we fell down Here hugger-mugger in the jellied fire: Our sacred earth in our day was our curse. It is clear from this poem that wherever Lowell was when ...”

“... than he could at home.Outside the John Garang mausoleum, a vast empty lot surrounded by a tall iron fence with gilded spikes, I suddenly find myself swallowed up in a swarming crowd. All along the fence, thousands of people are patiently waiting in line. In the street, among policemen and soldiers wearing brightly coloured camouflage, a group of men in ...”

“... May, ‘an eclectic blend of ulysses, kilroy, icarus, neptune, ishmael, noah, jonah, columbus, and richard halliburton! So you must, in all kindness, emphasise your mortal finitude when next we meet!’ He had leave in June, and it is through Gordon’s faithful eyes that we see Plath on the cover of the first volume of the letters: blonde hair, red lipstick ...”

“... back in England increasingly infuriated by their distinctly unvalorous and self-indulgent monarch, Richard II. King Henry IV proved a more convincing ruler than Richard, and his time on the Reysen helped excuse his murderous usurpation back home. The Teutonic Knights’ enterprise took three centuries to collapse under the ...”