“... the handlooms of the Bengal weavers, whose delicate silks and muslins were prized all over Europe. William Bentinck, governor of Madras and later governor-general, wrote that ‘the bones of the cotton weavers were bleaching the plains of India.’ Tariffs of 70 per cent and more were imposed on the textiles India produced, and cheap British cottons flooded ...”

“... of whether Rhodes was justified in his obsession with ‘expansion’ has long gone stale. William Kelleher Storey’s new Life turns our attention from Rhodes the visionary to the ruthless coloniser, who often pitted himself against imperial officialdom and its watery idealism. He is interested mainly in the persistence with which Rhodes created ...”

“... The British reappear in the strange voyage of the Batchelors’ Delight, 1683-5, captained by William Ambrosia Cowley and controlled by the more piratical William Dampier. A storm blew them to the Falklands – they had been ‘discoursing of the intrigues of women’, which brings bad weather – and they saw ‘foul ...”

“... of public business or its reductive impact on his imagination. In the mid-18th century the poet William Mason, like Marvell a native of Hull, proudly remembered how after 1660 Marvell’s ‘daring genius’ rose to ‘loftier heights’ than ‘beauty’s praise, or plaint of slighted love’, and ‘led the war’ against ‘freedom’s foes’. By the ...”

“... them as sheep, given bloodstains as a shepherd’s mark by their alleged Irish Nationalist masters. He was happy to accept ‘Cleared’ on behalf of Henley, with whom Kipling thus forged an invaluable link. The poem appeared on 8 March 1890. Kipling was a late-comer, and had come in fresh, to the battle. He was also a dirty fighter, which delighted ...”

“... from the eighth century onwards. A 19th-century example of this type of ‘scholarship’ was Sir William Muir’s The Life of Muhammad from Original Sources, first published in 1861, soon after the British brutally suppressed the Great Uprising of 1857 in India, particularly targeting the Muslims among its leaders. The nominal leader of the revolt, the last ...”

“... of Commons, a suitably purple version of the ‘Doomsday Plot’ fed to Wilson by the Army puppet-masters. Wilson even went so far as to warn the House that ‘there will be an attempt to misrepresent this information – which is a genuine find by the security authorities – but I can assure the House that these documents are genuine and not even put ...”

“... straw sun hats for horses, strappers who specialised in vigorous grooming, ostlers at inns, riding masters, horsebreakers and common or garden grooms. In the same way that the horse left its mark on the titles of the aristocracy of Europe, the Ritters, Cabelleros and Chevaliers, so it marked the surnames of the ordinary man: the ...”

“... climax. Unlike other American cities, LA has a police chief who is independent of his political masters. He has the equivalent of academic tenure and cannot be dismissed (without extraordinary cause) by his boss, the Mayor. This is to prevent the Police being used for political ends. Chief Daryl F. Gates rose through the ranks to the highest position in the ...”

“... taken as crucial. ‘That someone so near to French art should have pitted himself against these masters at the top of their form is a measure of Picasso’s confidence and daring ... within weeks of arriving in Paris the 19-year-old Spaniard had established his right to a place in the modern French tradition.’ It seems likely that Picasso had very ...”

“... desirability of strong, stable government by a virtuous, able and authentically British élite’. William Pitt was an especially important symbol of this new élite: his well-known private virtue (‘prettygirlibus indifferentissimus’) made him for many the model of what a public servant should be, even if for others he seemed entirely contemptuous of the ...”

“... of meaning and reference. ‘At least one reader’ turns out, fifty pages later, to have been William Empson. Brown refers, with irrefutable accuracy, to ‘an American woman actress’, ‘Infidelity’ seems to have some occult meaning for him, because he alludes, in a passage about ‘The Dead’, to Gabriel’s ‘fascination with his wife’s ...”

“... His indignation had outlived the causes of it. He was still furious: the men who had been his masters in the Fifties, Sixties and even Seventies had been Communist traitors. He wanted to go on burgling and bugging Labour ministers, to continue with his dirty tricks and his invasion of private lives. But he found all this much more difficult. His ...”

“... through language, but codes of behaviour were also written on the body. One reason dancing masters were so in demand in the 17th and 18th centuries was that they promised to teach deportment – the proper carriage of the body even after the music stopped. Some lapses from bodily decorum were permitted. Tears, for instance, might be acceptable – even ...”

“... in cash, with the remainder in interest-bearing instalments. The highest sum paid was $1750 for William, a carpenter – an immense amount at a time when the average working-class white person earned around $300 per year. George, Sue and their two young sons together went for $2480. The sale was managed by Joseph Bryan, a prominent slave dealer whose ...”