“... Iraq. A third British firm, ArmorGroup, was reported by the Washington Post in June to have a 1200-strong force in Iraq, with 240 armoured trucks. ArmorGroup is engaged in constant warfare as it goes about its main business of escorting supply convoys; it was attacked 293 times in the first four months of 2007, the Post reports. The narrow focus on a single US ...”

“... from the ‘grouch bag’ carried by travelling showmen. His parents were Jewish immigrants: Simon Marrix, of a family of tailors from Alsace-Lorraine, and Minna Schoenberg, the daughter of a Dutch magician who emigrated when his work in Germany ran out in the 1870s. All of the Marxes appear to have been clever with words – ...”

“... but Japan, the US and Hong Kong fit into the same frame. In all these countries the gangs have strong links to the power structure, but they live largely in a separate world; and while they may contaminate the workings of the state, they don’t threaten the state itself. The Russian state has broken down – it hasn’t disappeared – and at present, as ...”

“... with rich friends, he goes to the places rich people go. Nothing in his book suggests he has any strong prejudice against immigrants or an ingrained political hostility towards immigration: his wife, Ekaterina Paderina, is a Russian who overstayed her visa. Immigration (or ‘immigration, immigration, immigration’ as Banks has it) became the motif of the ...”

“... a convert to Evangelicalism. Gladstone’s ‘rescue work’ was undoubtedly the product of a very strong sexual drive. But it was sublimated. One can be as sure as one can be of anything that he was never guilty of what he described as ‘the act which is known as infidelity of the marriage bed’. He made a solemn declaration to that effect shortly before he ...”

“... of what he thought were like-minded professional historians to advise him. Niall Ferguson was one; Simon Schama was hired to convene a committee to produce a draft. But Gove wasn’t satisfied. Ferguson wanted the curriculum to have a global dimension, which wasn’t what Gove wanted at all; the proposals put forward by Schama’s committee also deviated too ...”

“... from poetry anthologies to studies of empire to the recent ‘family history of humanity’ by Simon Sebag Montefiore. These works tend to be rife with errors about her. With the appearance of Sophus Helle’s Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author, we finally have a good English translation, alongside several essays, rich in ...”

“... only Cambridge poet (two slim volumes from Ferry Press, plus the mimeo’d Ouch from The Curiously Strong) to put enough of a dent in multinational budgets to command serious media attention was Peter Ackroyd, a meticulously re-invented Man of Letters. The others, until Ben Watson elbowed his way onto the scene, have had to settle for a succès ...”

“... on purchasing the house. Ross has a tougher take on what it was that made the will to conform so strong. The public silence of the townspeople about the disasters of Celebration – the jerry-built houses, the school, and the intense pressure on dissenting individuals to stop complaining or leave – was much more, for Ross, to do with keeping up the ...”

“... was no point in going for the last few years. But now it’s different.’ Lobbyists with strong connections to Labour have been in particularly high demand, commanding a salary premium of 10 to 20 per cent at the biggest firms. In the months before the election, several Labour advisers took up public affairs jobs. Freddie Cook, a long-serving ...”

“... who bankrupted himself with riotous living and, unhinged by fantasies and ‘frantic from strong liquors’, killed two of his children. The King’s Men put on two productions based on this story: The Miseries of Enforced Marriage by the hack author and brothel-keeper George Wilkins, published in 1607; and A Yorkshire Tragedy, published in 1608. The ...”

“... who had put him in power crushed. A new republic was founded, with institutions – above all, a strong presidential executive – designed to give the country political stability. High-tech modernisation of the economy proceeded apace, with major infrastructural programmes and rapidly rising living standards in the towns, as growth accelerated. Large-scale ...”

“... writes, ‘is a place where miracles occur,’ and he himself dubs these raucous, ‘steam-roller strong’, three-to-four hour work-outs ‘my service’. ‘It’s something I’m heavily invested in, and my audience is heavily invested in. I take it pretty seriously,’ he said from the ICA stage. ‘I have no other skills,’ he added. ‘It’s the one ...”

“... college graduates and school teachers, were consigned to work as cleaners.Delmont makes a strong case that the unheralded work to which Blacks were assigned proved essential to Allied victory. Without the labour of thousands of Black troops removing mines, repairing railroad tracks and delivering food, ammunition, fuel and other supplies, the army ...”

“... us, ‘hitting me with a wire brush until I bled if I didn’t use the potty’. She also had strong views on constipation: ‘She laid me on the draining-board in the kitchen and stuck carbolic soap up my arse.’The young Reg didn’t like himself: ‘I was too fat, I was too short, my face just looked weird, my hair would never do what I wanted it ...”