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“... the Revolution. Schama persuasively argues that slaves themselves transformed a battle between white people over political rights into a black revolution of sorts. (Steven Hahn recently made the same point about the role of slaves in the American Civil War.*) But given the mixed motives and inconsistency of British commanders, Schama’s repeated ...”

“... in the summer. He dresses in the same way every day, in a pair of narrow black jeans and a crisp white shirt; he has his shirts professionally cleaned, a luxury he pays for with the money he earns working in a convenience store two evenings a week. In April 2004, Ahmad is two months away from leaving school. His grades are good enough for him to go to ...”

“... A few weeks ago, in Mexico, I was asked to sign a protest against Christopher Columbus, on behalf of the original native populations of the American continents and islands, or rather, of their descendants. I understand the feelings which inspire such gestures, and have some sympathy with them, although it seems to me that the only object of protesting against something that happened half a millennium ago is to get a little publicity for a cause of 1992 rather than 1492 ...”

“... could tell he had some talent,’ the head coach, Madeleine Barlocher, told his biographer Christopher Clarey, ‘but I had a good group with a lot of young boys with talent … I would never have guessed he would become what he would become.’ The opening chapters of The Master, Clarey’s book on Federer, are full of cautious early assessments of ...”

“... man’. Clara Saint, however, spoke to the French border police, one of whom happened to be a White Russian. Plain-clothed officers took up position close to where Nureyev was sitting with his minders. All he had to do was go up to them and ask for freedom, which he duly did. There was a brief tug-of-war, with Nureyev in the middle, until the French ...”

“... piece by piece after the Second World War; now, after years of degeneration following the white man’s departure, the empires that ruled Africa and Asia don’t seem quite as bad. The perplexingly affirmative work of Niall Ferguson and David Armitage scants, if it doesn’t actually trivialise, the suffering and dispossession brought by empire to its ...”

“... an Arkful of daft creatures. Kermit is on the cover of this book,* bursting through the plane of white paper as if in symbolic disdain for the printed page on which his fame has never relied. The full career of Jim Henson reveals that the gulf between the traditions of fairy tale and the self-inventing styles of television culture generally thought to have ...”

“... Chiang and her husband when he and Auden were visiting China to report on the war with Japan, Christopher Isherwood wrote that she can become at will the cultivated, Westernised woman with a knowledge of literature and art; the technical expert, discussing aeroplane engines and machine-guns; the inspector of hospitals; the president of a ...”

“... Krin and Spitting Image. Their jests have served to make the institution stronger than ever. Christopher Hitchens – although he can poke fun with the best of them – offers an unjestingly rational argument for abolishing the English monarchy. He begins with a perplexed description of the country’s convulsion on learning as the lead item on the ten ...”

“... culture according to a linguistic model, as a system of differences and oppositions (black/white, left/right, raw/cooked, whatever) to which individuals are subject, briefly represented a fashionable alternative in the 1960s, despite the anguished warning of one Communist intellectual that the theory would cause despair among the Renault workers at ...”

“... for years to come, while his plays began to establish social conscience at the level of style. Christopher Bigbsy, the author of this new biography, has a perfect ear for the manners and motions of Miller’s art, and he tells a gripping story of Miller’s hunt for truth. There are mysteries to bear and ironies to become invested in – all good ...”

“... too, to imagine Toni Morrison or Caryl Phillips being asked to take charge of such matters. As Christopher Miller points out in The French Atlantic Triangle, in France ‘literature was one of the most important battlegrounds for the debate on slavery.’ But in spite of the wealth of scholarship on the Atlantic slave trade, surprisingly little work has ...”

“... been hit – it was a plane – enemies – terrorists – hijackers – the Pentagon too – the White House – Pittsburgh.’ By the time I reach my department at NYU everyone is ripped with panic. There was a bomb threat earlier and security has only just left. Phones ring non-stop but go dead as soon as they’re picked up. E-mail is down. The BBC and ...”

“... His book, which Chua helped him to get published, is a kind of counterpart: why does the American white working class produce so many losers? Particularly dysfunctional, he argues, are his own people – the ‘Scots-Irish hillbillies’ who settled in Eastern Kentucky. He thinks that it wasn’t only his mother who ‘lacked even a modicum of temper ...”

“... its history as ‘the pre-eminent sea-fighting force of the post-1500 world’, in the words of Christopher McKee, resonated still in school history books, comics and war films (Officer with mug: ‘Cocoa, sir?’ Officer with binoculars: ‘Good man, Number One!’). The most popular cigarette brands suggested that seagoing manliness and smoking were one ...”