“... the Middle East. The uprisings of the Arab Spring have so far produced anarchy in Libya, a civil war in Syria, greater autocracy in Bahrain and resumed dictatorial rule in Egypt. In Syria, the uprising began in March 2011 with demonstrations against the brutality of Assad’s regime. ‘Peace! Peace!’ protesters chanted. But ‘if there was a fair election ...”

“... how far Napoleon can still be taken – even in France – is less clear. Up to the First World War, the strength or weakness of Bonapartism was usually a potent indicator of how French men and women responded to their nation. Thus Napoleon’s improved reputation in the 1830s (his body was brought back in triumph from St Helena in 1840) pointed towards the ...”

“... trop tard pour l’histoire de la Révolution Française.’ He was, of course, wrong. The post-war generation, Cobb, Rudé, Soboul, Tönnesson, focusing upon popular movements, the Parisian working populace and the thugs who made a reality of the Terror in the provinces, found plenty to absorb their attention. In addition, a long tradition of studies of ...”

“... and its subtitle might have been spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘Peace to the Cottages! War on the Palaces!’ This slogan went straight into the German radical tradition and, from there, into folkmemory and cliché. I had always assumed that the words came straight from Büchner’s heart; Friede den Hütten! Krieg den Palästen! But when I read ...”

“... In the book, I argue that several contemporary phenomena – chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, recovered memory, multiple personality disorder, satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction – are hysterical epidemics, real disorders but caused by psychological conflicts rather than viruses, nerve gas, devil worshippers or extra-terrestrials. The ...”

“... I made my first visit to Belfast when I was almost 11, late in 1939. The war had just started, and Italy had joined Germany in aggression. My father was the sergeant-in-charge of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Warren point, Co. Down and he was instructed to arrest all enemy aliens in the town and convey them for internment to Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast ...”

“... strictly limited, there’s always artificial light to read by. I have never had to prepare for a class by candlelight. I have never had to look for matches by the light of the fire. I always have a torch placed where I can find it in the dark. I have absolutely no idea what it would be like to live without electricity or gas, without torch or match, in a ...”

“... Mendoza has transformed the corruption, chaos and constant bloodletting of Mexico’s disastrous War on Drugs into blackly comic fiction. He is best known for a series set in his home town of Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, heartland of Mexico’s most powerful cartel. Silver Bullets, the first instalment, came out in Spanish in 2008, followed by La ...”

“... seven years later. The reverberations from those events reached a long way: as far as the Cold War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy (maybe), Watergate and, every four years to this day, the American presidential election. It is a story that reminds us of the bond – political, cultural, economic, sentimental – between the United States and Cuba, a ...”

“... doubt, but not the man who did more single-handedly to save the world from the danger of nuclear war than anyone. And who, single-handed, ensured that the transition in the USSR and the Soviet empire did not end in a bloodbath, as it did in Yugoslavia. This year I was luckier. The World Political Forum (President: M.S. Gorbachev) sent an invitation from ...”

“... burnt flesh of his child. Till Achilles is as mortal as he.’ To preserve him from the coming war with Troy, Thetis disguises her teenage son as a girl and hides him among the women at the Court of King Lycomedes on the island of Skiros. Deidamia, the princess, sees through the disguise and seduces him. Eventually Odysseus, Nestor and Ajax come looking ...”

“... behind an unusual tripartite screen. Circling the city stood isolated funerary towers – upper-class family tombs several storeys high, built in the early years of the city’s prosperity but in use throughout its history. They could each hold hundreds of bodies in individual niches racked up in side passages off the central corridors on each floor, all ...”

“... This step was not as obvious or inevitable as it may now appear. Americans before the Second World War spoke less of the country’s exceptional primacy than of its exceptional aloofness from European-style power politics. They prided themselves on being above espionage, diplomatic intrigue and standing armies; they preferred to speak of international legal ...”

“... to the criminal excess of an idea on the march. Whether the idea is the triumph of the working class or of a master race, ideology leads to the graveyard. Although liberal-minded intellectuals have repeatedly mobilised some version of this argument against the isms of right and left, they have seldom mustered a comparable scepticism about that other idée ...”

“... Ashurst sisters, perhaps Mazzini’s closest English friends. For labour leaders and for middle-class radicals alike, Mazzini was a hero, and indispensable financial backing for his enterprises came from industrialists and businessmen in Newcastle, Liverpool and Glasgow. Without the help of John Macadam and other Glaswegians, Mazzini might not have been ...”