“... at the foot of Black Mountain, the highest peak in the state. By the start of the Second World War, more than ten thousand people were living in Lynch, and the mines, which employed four thousand, were among the most productive in the world. In a single nine-hour shift, workers could extract and prepare for shipping more than twelve thousand tons of ...”

“... three; he had nightmares, wet the bed and had tantrums. By the age of four he had lived through a war, in 2021, and two Israeli assaults – Operation Breaking Dawn in 2022 and Operation Shield and Arrow in 2023. In between bombing campaigns, Israeli drones were always buzzing overhead.On the morning of 7 October 2023 I tried to call Ibrahim, but the ...”

“... disease was evidence of a weakness of will. Johnson isn’t so callous.But he is a product of his class and his background. He is a man who rags children and throws people into swimming pools. During one of London’s recent heatwaves, he chided those who felt that travelling on public transport was intolerable in 40°C heat. It might be a little ...”

“... Mira Schendel – born Myrrha Dagmar Dub in 1919 in Zurich, brought up in Italy, uprooted by war to Yugoslavia, and from there to Brazil in 1949 – is moving, difficult, full of strange writing and immediate visual pleasure.* Schendel was an intellectual, feeding on Wittgenstein and Cardinal Newman (her two incompatible heroes), as well as a constant ...”

“... his philosophy, style and historical method. In so doing, Cannadine plunges into several dangerous war zones, political, cultural and academic. He starts by dismissing the common charge that Trevelyan was the unreflecting mouthpiece of progressive Whiggism at prayer, arguing that Trevelyan’s political beliefs substantially evolved over his lifetime and were ...”

“... European vacations were ‘a mainstay of her childhood … She was comfortable travelling first class and dressing in a formal gown for dinner aboard an opulent ocean liner.’ Such luxury was not an end in itself: edification was. When as a teenager Rich attended a private school, ‘her favourite feeling was “that of having accomplished ...”

“... Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia, and cannon-fodder on a heroic scale in the First World War, when 1.3 million mustered for Asquith and Lloyd George. But its primary function remained domestic intimidation, the maintenance of British rule by threat or exercise of force. Laid out across the country, its cantonments were a permanent reminder of what ...”

“... the Ottoman Empire, was to have its capital. It is where, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the most politically developed and socially radical version of the dream of Arab unity was conceived by the founders of the Arab Socialist Baath (‘resurrection’) Party. Syria is also the terminus of the Arab Spring. The country today is in ruins: there ...”

“... and lacquered boxes showing scenes of his (largely mythical) heroism in the Great Patriotic War. There were statue groups showing Leonid Ilyich solving engineering problems for an audience of awed scientists, six-foot Brezhnev pencils from the Karl Liebknecht Pencil Factory, Asian rugs embroidered with words of squirming servility, miniature machine ...”

“... But the appearances are deceptive. The problem is not the same. Britain’s diminution since the war has been a long-drawn-out process. But its starting point is clear: the illusions bred by victory in 1945, under a leader of 1914 vintage, followed virtually without intermission by the realities of financial dependency on Washington, austerity at home and ...”

“... she acquired a driver’s licence, a fancy car and a number of lovers. In 1939, on the brink of war, she married Robert Antelme. The following year, it became illegal for most married women to work. Duras stayed at home and tried to write, but Gallimard rejected her first novel, which after much rewriting was published by Plon in 1943 as Les ...”

“... prisoners) has recourse to homosexuality merely because nothing else is on tap. Similarly, working-class boys no longer have an automatic respect for ‘gentlemen’ like Gide nor do they unquestioningly submit to their whims. Certainly Gide would never be considered a great ‘moralist’ today. Yet his reputation lingers on; in France the idée reçue about ...”

“... of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Against the grim background of protracted civil war in the Netherlands, in France and in Germany, Neostoicism offered a philosophy of fortitude and consolation not merely to intellectuals but to princes and statesmen. It was a philosophy for laymen, who found in pagan literature a restorative retreat from the ...”

“... many tasty ingredients: sex, lies, drugs, espionage, violence, race, hypocrisy and a complicated class element’ which involved ‘the Doctor, the Lord, the Spy’ and Profumo himself. The leader of the opposition, Harold Wilson, dubbed them ‘this dingy quadrilateral’, though, as will soon appear, a much dingier quadrilateral was composed of four very ...”

“... anthologies. My favourite example involves the British anthology The Terrible Rain: The War Poets 1939-45, edited by Brian Gardner and published in 1966; not only did it exclude Gaelic work, but its sole mention of Sorley MacLean (who lived until 1996) occurs when Gardner lists him among poets killed in action during the Second World ...”