“... 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 ...”

“... Both sons were educated at Rugby, but whereas Austen went on to Cambridge and grand tours of France and Germany, Neville on leaving school ‘took courses in applied science at Mason College’. It was his father’s decision that sent Neville on his first commercial venture, to the Caribbean island of Andros, where he spent seven years of appalling ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... bands wear cummerbunds. At the finals Leyland Band, from Lancashire, wore white jackets with a red rose in the buttonhole; Aldbourne, from Wiltshire, matched its socks to its bright red jackets. Many bands have two uniforms: one for the stage and one for ‘walking out’, a more casual outfit (in my old band it resembled a school uniform, with a blazer and ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... by de Gaulle. Not long after his coronation he was welcomed in Washington by President Kennedy; France, for its part, had high hopes that he would manage its postcolonial interests in the Maghreb – he was known to be astute and an implacable adversary.He had been on the throne a little more than two years when Moumen Diouri, a revolutionary firebrand in ...”

“... Mbembe has never been interested in supplying easy answers to difficult questions.In Germany and France, Mbembe has (against his will) become the public face of an ill-defined ‘postcolonial left’. This isn’t always a pleasant role. In April 2020, a few months before he was due to deliver the opening lecture at the Ruhrtriennale, Mbembe was told that ...”

“... betray:We are born with the deadSee, they return, and bring us with them.The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew treeAre of equal duration. A people without historyIs not redeemed from time, for history is a patternOf timeless moments. So, while the light failsOn a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapelHistory is now and England.Seen from ...”

“... care of these little ones all the time?’ When the family fled Belgium for Sète in the South of France following the Nazi invasion, she learned to sail and started smoking. Her French mother was fretful and nervous; her father (who was Greek but pretended not to be) was conservative and ‘tyrannical’. Chafing at the girlishness of her name, Arlette, at ...”

“... So that, for example, I could write plays very quickly.’ He began to follow a routine: he rose early, worked, ate and rested at set times before going to bed at nine. Around this time, he estimated that he had enough material for forty plays. The prediction turned out to be remarkably accurate, even if the works to come were mostly not those he’d ...”

“... cities with shells of poison gas, a fetching compound of arsenic and henbane. After the war, France and Germany signed the Strasburg Agreement of 1675, the first treaty to ban the use of chemical weapons. Habsburg hegemony was not all minuets and onion domes (the sign that a parish had returned to Rome). Rady’s index lists 42 Habsburg wars as against ...”

“... Nelly’s not very wonderful career on the stage came to an end at this period, but her fortunes rose. By the age of 21 she owned a fine four-storey house near Mornington Crescent. Tomalin thinks it must have been bought by Dickens. ‘In eighteen months, the situation of the Ternan family had been transformed from uncertainty to something approaching ...”

“... for motion, however, is too strong. Even when his wife and daughter were satisfactorily dumped in France, even when he was between affairs, even when he had given up his quarrels with the dean and chapter at York, he seemed perpetually compelled to quit Shandy Hall. Sometimes it is health trips of increasingly unhopeful prognosis; sometimes it is the ...”