“... between him and his taking of the oath.’ The leader of the House, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, rose to object. The speaker silenced him, reminding him that Hicks-Beach had himself not yet taken the oath. And that was the end of it. What is so remarkable is that Bradlaugh took the oath, which is precisely what he had sought not to do at the outset. Even ...”

“... in the cathedral of Notre-Dame. A profanity, a metamorphosis? Children who were used to strewing rose petals in the path of the Eucharist as it was carried through the village on the feast of Corpus Domini now skipped and sang around the liberty trees set up on the village green. The model lingered in the vast parades of Soviet Russia and continues still in ...”

“... battles, we know precious little about how it actually developed. Repulsed from Orléans on 14 June, Attila was brought to battle by a combined army of Goths, Romans and Aetius’ clients among the petty tribes of the Rhineland. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, the aged Theoderic was killed and Attila suffered his first great battlefield loss. Gothic ...”

“... traditional entertainment for the working classes, just like Chaucer and Shakespeare. In late June 1963, the front page of the Daily Mirror had a banner headline: ‘Prince Philip and the Profumo Scandal – Rumour Is Utterly Unfounded’. Excited readers scanned the story in vain for what the rumour might be. The Prince Philip ‘allegation’ was a ...”

“... home.’ Jackson’s description in ‘The Lottery’ of the ‘clear and sunny’ morning of 27 June, ‘with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day’, seemed so real that some readers wrote to the magazine to ask where the stoning of Tessie Hutchinson had taken place. These queries tired Jackson. ‘The number of people who expected Mrs Hutchinson to win a ...”

“... her subjects. Their fluctuating satins, the swags of laurel-green curtain behind them and the late June evening clouds all rise and fall to an inner rhythm that is unmistakeably amorous. To view this painting is to get tossed up in that convulsion, but it’s also to recognise that its wellsprings do not belong to you. Love such as this is reserved for higher ...”

“... to Oxford instead. Still in the area, however, was Colonel Richard Norton. In the first week of June the Royalist garrison was catastrophically ambushed by Norton while out on a pre-emptive spree, and the second siege began. By now the house had become ‘a great annoyance to all the country’, but it was not long before Norton himself was summoned away to ...”

“... Minister’s preoccupation with military power underlay his long interview with Ha’aretz (18 June 1999), in which he made a case for trying to reach an agreement with Syria first, on the grounds that it was a serious military power whereas the Palestinians were not. ‘The Palestinians are the source of legitimacy for the continuation of the ...”

“... murder mystery set several hundred years ago in Italy can’t help but recall The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, who makes an appearance in Binet’s earlier novel The Seventh Function of Language – though where Eco’s plot turns on a secret copy of a lost book, Binet’s this time revolves around a lost cycle of paintings. Another obvious precursor ...”

“... the ‘B’ in the ‘ABC’ industrial region surrounding São Paulo and the place where he rose to prominence, challenging the military dictatorship by leading strikes and helping to found the PT – the Workers’ Party. His supporters, wearing the party’s red T-shirts, had unfurled a huge banner reading ‘Elections without Lula Are Fraud’ and ...”

“... of US-EU sanctions and plummeting oil prices has started to spread economic gloom. Between June and mid-December 2014 the ruble lost half its value – its downward path mirroring the slump in the price of oil, which went from $109 per barrel of Urals crude in June to $67 in December. All this has been exacerbated by ...”

“... allowed the propaganda against female potential to continue. The book was a manifesto, and it rose on a spring tide of popular enthusiasm for feminism; appearing after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and the same year as Kate Millett’s blazing Sexual Politics, it marked the height of postwar hopefulness that things could change. My editor ...”

“... by the impresario Philip Henslowe, worried about falling revenues at his Southwark playhouses, the Rose and the Swan, due to competition from Shakespeare’s company at the newly opened Globe. Henslowe’s partner in the Fortune venture was his son-in-law, the actor Edward Alleyn, who improved the occasion by buying some properties to let on Whitecross ...”

“... oranges?), a journey that must have been mostly by train. They were definitely in Cairo by 26 June 1941, because the day and place are on Joe’s army record. He was granted an emergency commission as second lieutenant to his old regiment, the Royal Engineers, and was soon posted to Palestine.Joe, now 47, wasn’t obliged to sign up, but there were no ...”

“... everything Rhodes could ask are often when the gulf between them is most apparent. One happened in June 2015, after a white supremacist called Dylann Roof walked into a black church in Charleston and shot dead nine members of a Bible study group. The following week Obama spoke at their funeral. After reading from his prepared text, Obama paused. It felt as ...”