“... the novel’s account of the emergence of 20th-century feminisms at once within and against the class and gender constraints prevalent in 1880. Its final section, Woolf noted in her diary, would need to be as weighty as its first, and ‘must in fact give the other side, the submerged side of that’. Trevelyan, by contrast, remained a stranger to ...”

“... In the late 1930s the Surrealists agitated directly against French neutrality in the Spanish Civil War as well as opposing homegrown fascist movements like Action Française and Croix-de-Feu, which called for the deportation of all aliens. Their texts of protest didn’t hold back in their use of such labels as ‘authoritarian’ and ‘totalitarian’. By ...”

“... economy.2In October 1899, the Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State declared war on the British. By June 1900, the main Boer towns had been taken, and the war seemed to be over. It seemed to have been a conventional war: strongholds besieged, troops ...”

“... year of his disgrace, the sleek, balding, faintly exotic Jack Profumo was secretary of state for war. It sounds like an important job – what could matter more than war for the functioning of the state? Undoubtedly this helped to give impetus to the Profumo affair. Help! The ...”

“... rendered life itself all but impossible for those who have survived Israel’s bombardment. The war was provoked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack, but the desire to inflict suffering on Gaza, not just on Hamas, didn’t arise on 7 October. Here is Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad in 2012: ‘We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of ...”

“... characters in Leeds, possibly because it wasn’t affluent enough or because this was during the war when cats had to pull in their belts along with everyone else. 2 March, Venice. Fur much in evidence in Venice, where they plainly have no truck with animal rights, old ladies in their minks queuing along with everyone else to get on the vaporetto. One reason ...”

“... Kenneth Branagh​ ’s Belfast is set in the early months of the Troubles, in a mixed working-class district that is cleared of its Catholic residents by a loyalist mob. Paving stones are lifted to barricade the end of the street. Neighbourhood vigilantes are replaced by paramilitaries and the British army. Though the representation of events is spare and often stylised, the film catches the impact of the crisis not just on smashed and burned terraced houses but on the fabric of everyday decency ...”

“... for which the American government might kill a woman. Female traitors during the Second World War – Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, the ‘Doll Woman’ – had received prison terms. And no American civilian, man or woman, had ever received the death penalty in peacetime for ‘conspiracy to commit espionage’, the official charge against her. Almost until ...”

“... as describing a catholicity of arguments without a prayer of resolution – battles without a war. I doubt Hughes would agree to being labelled ‘post-modern’ – he barely avoids giving Derrida a silly nickname – but then no honourable intellectual wants a label. Yet the label works, because Hughes’s method is by and large positional, governed by ...”

“... so much that was to come flowed from its design – the separate entrances for first and second class, the novel situation for early passengers that you went in at one level, then climbed steps to meet your conveyance at another. He floats no resolution to the tension between heritage and modernisation. His book is part social history, part architectural ...”

“... expansionism which brought all else in its wake was connected with narrowing of the upper-class family around the male line, ‘no conclusive answer is presently available.’ But this has the makings of a cop-out. As it happens, one of those brain-teasers that give the statistically-minded no trouble but are agony for the unfortunate remainder ...”

“... ministers cannot be sued in law on the ground that to admit this would be to admit that the Civil War never occurred. The Conservative Party’s Euro-haters, who would die in the last ditch to defend the rights of Parliament, turn into pussy-cats the moment the word ‘confidence’ is mentioned. Neither the Conservative nor the Labour Party has risen to the ...”

“... the country house near Palermo that was the model for the Villa Salina in the novel, survived the war, briefly became a fashionable nightclub, but is now derelict; his mother’s family palace, at Santa Margherita di Belice – the Donnafugata of the book – was sold in 1925 by her brother, the Socialist deputy Alessandro Tasca to pay his debts. In 1968, the ...”

“... Cavour, the ideal of a cool, far-sighted statesman; Garibaldi, the perfect chieftain in irregular war, dashing but rash and hot-headed; Mazzini, the typical conspirator, ardent and fanatical – all of them full of generosity and devotion.’ Mack Smith’s Cavour and Garibaldi were literally reversed. The 1954 text is sprinkled with references to ...”

“... of his system, and could therefore explain how the Americans sustained a four-year revolutionary war without having any secured money – by printing it, and waiting for the inevitable depreciation, which meant that everybody redeemed its value in the long run. However, Article I of the US Constitution is not in the spirit of Law, for it insists on gold and ...”