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“... which Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore (and, slightly earlier, Gertrude Stein) rose up, angry and ready to do battle with mediocrity. Carr describes a pretty mediocre Philadelphia a hundred years ago, ‘pink and drab’ and hidebound. H.D. found it disconcerting after a bucolic childhood in the Moravian town of Bethlehem, further north ...”

“... stands out. To wring tax out of the population, the Crown decreed that everyone in Northern France over the age of eight had to buy seven kilos of salt a year. This was more than anyone could use, unless they used it for preserving food, which they weren’t allowed to do – for that, they had to buy extra salt. Besides being heavier for each ...”

“... such loads across enormous distances. A new type of fencing was clearly required.In 1873 Henry Rose, who farmed near Waterman Station in Illinois, thought of a new way to control a ‘breachy’ cow. (‘Breachy’ was Rose’s word.) He attached a wooden board, studded with sharp pieces of wire, to the cow’s head, so ...”

“... was quite exceptional. Again, as one might suppose, European intellectual and cultural influence rose as one proceeded from the less to the more educated, and was at its lowest among the illiterate. Nevertheless, most inhabitants of the Western hemisphere, before the era of mass emigration from Europe to North and the southern cone of South America, lived in ...”

“... twinges’, ‘scalding heat’ and the excrescence of ‘deep-tinged loathsome matter’. ‘I rose very disconsolate, having rested very ill by the poisonous infection raging in my veins and anxiety and vexation boiling in my breast. What! thought I, can this beautiful, this sensible, and this agreeable woman be so sadly defiled?’ Louisa refused to ...”

“... German even before his marriage. As a child, he showed signs of being drawn to the old enemy, France. One of his best childhood experiences was a ten-day state visit to France in August 1855 with his parents and Vicky. They were the guests of Napoleon III, who drove Bertie round Paris in a curricle. Wearing Highland ...”

“... and old-fashioned, free of neo-pagan triumphalism and yet rooted in traditional stereotypes. When France fell in 1940, he remarked that ‘he was glad from the bottom of his heart at the French defeat, but could never be so at Hitler’s triumph.’ This kind of ambiguity – yes, but if only someone other than Hitler had achieved it – paralysed would-be ...”

“... Tooze shows that in the first year of the war the share of national output going to the military rose by 60 per cent. Hitler resisted pressure from his advisers to prepare for a long war because he believed – correctly – that Germany could not win a long war. Instead, he insisted on the massive expansion of programmes for aircraft production, ammunition ...”

“... ten places on the UN Human Development Index between 1990 and 2000, even though per capita income rose from $368 to $2000. Shaxson provides some vivid glimpses into the misery of these seemingly rich nations, but his real concern is to explain how and why they have failed so badly. He is sceptical of the left-wing tendency to see the problem in terms of ...”

“... the 17th century, as a result of the strains attending the setting up of absolutist states, there rose up (or at any rate rose much higher) an ‘invisible wall of affects between one human body and another, repelling and separating’. This is only one aspect of a wider theory of his in which a rational connection is found ...”

“... cup containing black coffee to which, under her master’s gaze, she added two drops of rose-water in the manner of a holy rite.’ Lovely young things rush about London when Attallah cries: ‘Find me an orchid, darling. I need an orchid – the best in town.’ The entourage at Attallah’s publishing house were girls with names, double and triple ...”

“... And so, in 1989, when bulldozers in Southwark accidentally laid bare the foundations first of the Rose Theatre and then of the Globe, a furore began fit to astonish any passing Elizabethan ghost. The possibility that one of these sites might fall prey to property developers generated more squeaking and gibbering in the London streets than you could shake a ...”

“... money would be quite correct and yet miss the special character of its mental state. In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium, but above all in Germany, the mighty realms of politics, diplomacy, commerce and public administration have been condensed into tiny and arbitrary numerical quantities: to be precise, tenths of a percentage ...”

“... distant stands. ‘They’re off.’ As the thunder of the hoofs receded, the roar of the punters rose. The Red Cross van lumbered slowly in pursuit. I began to follow the sport, and the white-coated gatekeepers often let me in without a ticket once the first race was underway. Ancient names such as Lord Howard de Walden, exotic ones such as the Aga ...”

“... for other cultures. He was also fluent in French, and made lengthy and mysterious journeys to France. These were supposedly undertaken for the good of his health, yet it is suspected that, in this and other instances, he was acting as a spy. Although not lacking in bravery, he never captured the main prize – a Manila galleon perhaps – so never got ...”