“... assumed to be part of Greater Russia. The Balts are setting out to treat them as the second-class, lower-cultured citizens the Balts always thought they were; the Central Asians see them as Christian oppressors. Christian Armenians prosecute a war in the Caucasus which they define almost as holy: as the struggle of a ...”

“... hope then, in which differences wash away. In this way, and to the consternation of a certain class of cultural crusader for Afrikaans, English may yet assume a central, even critical role in the making of a new, transcendent national identity. Yet becoming detached from one’s ‘ethnic roots’ involves processes every bit as complex and worthy of ...”

“... was a French patriot, a Catholic, an archaeologist and a sharpshooter in the Franco-Prussian War. They were married to the engineer and archaeologist Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy and together the couple undertook a number of expeditions to Persia. Their ‘common dress’ reflected their common interests (one journalist wrote that Dieulafoy’s male attire ...”

“... latter was given to the Netherlands when the Swedes failed to pay). After the First World War came Spain, Czechoslovakia, the US, Greece and Austria and the site was expanded across the canal to incorporate the gardens of Sant’Elena. Following a hiatus from 1943 to 1947 (Mussolini’s 1942 Biennale, dedicated to military art but not mentioning the ...”

“... assets fall into the hands of businessmen close to the top junta leaders: the result will be a class of oligarchs similar to Russia’s. The outside world meanwhile seems to be banking on engagement leading to reform; but if it doesn’t, the Obama administration has no back-up plan, or none that one can see. Chinese diplomats, worried that the junta is ...”

“... to maintain. These triremes won Greece the Persian Wars and lost Athens the Peloponnesian War, after its Sicilian expedition ended in a naval debacle. Triremes seem to have enjoyed a continuous history into late antiquity, but after the death of Alexander the Great, the kings and kinglets who competed for his legacy began to build much bigger ...”

“... November, 2004 – about half the number killed by aerial attack on London during the Second World War. Roberts’s figures have been criticised on two grounds: that he multiplied up from a random sample of population clusters to get a figure for the whole country, and that the people in the clusters his team interviewed were not representative of the nation ...”

“... despair led to the Palestine question being transferred to the UN at the end of the Second World War. The UN was a very young and inexperienced organisation in those days, and the people it appointed to find a solution to the conflict were at a loss where to begin or how to proceed. The Jewish Agency gladly filled the vacuum, exploiting Palestinian disarray ...”

“... through from outside. He took grim satisfaction from France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which he blamed on the incompetence of the chiefs of staff. He deplored the bribery and ballot-rigging which made a mockery of the new ‘democratic’ elections, and stood firm, but alone, against the forces of reaction. He also had misfortune to ...”

“... west of Chelmsford. There he and his family remained, heads down, for the duration of the Civil War. Following a similar logic, a three-storey-deep indestructible bunker was built between 1952 and 1953 at Kelvedon Hatch, where it remained in readiness throughout the most heated episodes of the Cold War. From 1961 it was a ...”

“... Rubin, went to Radcliffe College when she was 16, ‘one of three Jewish women in her freshman class’, Robins says, ‘and the only one to admit being so’. She met Lionel Trilling in 1927 and married him two years later. She had hopes of being a singer, but two thyroid operations wrecked her vocal cords, and she turned to writing. She wrote a regular ...”

“... writings, which introduced Herzen to Anglo-American readers, he came to resemble a pragmatic Cold War liberal rather than a revolutionary socialist. Berlin’s portrait (or self-portrait) has stood largely unaltered for more than half a century. Herzen’s work has not had consistent backing inside or outside academia, on the left or on the right, and Aileen ...”

“... of Eastern Europe, preparing for a research trip to East Berlin while grieving for his working-class communist father, is grazed by a car on Abbey Road. He is involved with a glamorous young art student called Jennifer Moreau, whom he took to his father’s funeral a few weeks before, and who has shown up with a stepladder so that they can re-create the ...”

“... has been an English Chekhov. That mocking analyst of the historical failure and inertia of his own class was turned, in the English theatre, into a charming chronicler of whimsicality and eccentricity. This analytic and teaching dramatist is detached from his specific intelligence and viewpoint, and is then all tough talk and open stagecraft. In one ...”

“... affair. Julian Haviland, Anthony Bevins and Philip Webster of the Times would all pass with first-class honours any finals examination in Belgrano Studies: but as members of the House of Commons Lobby, they necessarily have to give their attention to every ephemeral political event and could not devote themselves to the intricacies of 30 April-2 May ...”