“... anything in the 1990s, yet between 2005 and 2008 prices soared: wheat and maize grown in the US rose by about 130 per cent; so did American soya, which goes mostly to animal feed. Dairy prices shot up (butter by 74 per cent, powdered milk by 69 per cent); the price of chicken went up by two-thirds. A month before the banking meltdown in 2008, ‘food ...”

“... site was, on average, barely two metres above sea level, and four metres below the level the Haven rose to during the 2013 storm.I have to dwell for a bit on the weirdness of that last sentence. It has ‘sea level’ both as a constant and as a value that goes up and down all the time. Human life and property by the trillion dollarload hang on the millimetre ...”

“... than any since records began, 250 years ago. It started in late May, with peaks in mid and late June. In Yorkshire and Humberside, the worst affected areas in June, 27,000 homes and businesses were flooded. In low-lying Hull, pumps failed to cope with the deluge, and a man trying to clear a storm drain died of ...”

“... leaving only half a dozen as the protesters’ final defences. Then, early on the morning of 11 June, the police entered Taksim Square, stopping a few metres short of the park. Seven police TOMA vehicles, armoured water cannon, their white paint damaged in previous street clashes, formed a line with riot police units in helmets and shields. The line ...”

“... travelling to Athens and Rhodes for lessons in rhetoric and philosophy. Pompey meanwhile steadily rose to a position of dominance after his victory at Mutina and the murder of Brutus’ father. He overcame the followers of the anti-Sullan general Quintus Sertorius in Spain in 72; helped to crush the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 71; rapidly established ...”

“... party in the pub shook their heads over the technological defeatism of the Americans: the missile rose out of the earth’s atmosphere, steered by four graphite rudders in its slipstream. One hundred kilometres up, it reached the top of an are as neat as the illustration of a parabola in a geometry textbook. You have to pause for a moment, there, as the ...”

“... At 6 a.m. on 12 June 2002, four FBI agents barged into the SoHo loft of Samuel Waksal, the former CEO of the biotech company ImClone Systems Inc, and led him away in handcuffs: he was charged with insider trading. His father and daughter had dumped nearly 175,000 ImClone shares only days before the Food and Drug Administration announced that it had rejected Erbitux, the compay’s cancer drug, leading to a steep price fall ...”

“... chapter and goes on to invoke Algerian independence fighters executed in French jails, the White Rose conspirators Sophie and Hans Scholl, Stalin’s victims at the Moscow trials, the Chinese murdered in Nanjing, the anarchists put to death in Franco’s Spain. These images are intercut with grisly scenes from Greuze and Goya, history and representation ...”

“... not realise that … Germany is fighting our battles.’Channon’s moment of glory arrived in June 1936, when Edward VIII – whom he had cultivated for so long as Prince of Wales – dined at his house in Belgrave Square. It was an ecstatic evening, from the royal arrival just after nine until ‘at 1.45 the king ...”

“... A Spoiler at Noonday, which he held across his heart. He was buttoned into an overcoat: we were in June, and it had turned wintery. I had expected him to hiccup, like his typewriter. ‘I think we shall have a wet one of it,’ he said, as he led me to his car. It took me a little time to work my way through this syntactical oddity. Meanwhile he creaked and ...”

“... back to Boston in the custody of the US police. After a long-delayed trial, he was sentenced on 26 June this year to two concurrent life terms without parole; passing sentence, the judge told him that his crimes ‘defy comprehension’. Early in the investigation, the local district attorney, Martha Coakley, suggested on national television that Entwistle had ...”

“... counts. Take Mr Hattersley, writing about the European election results in the Independent for 22 June. He went straight into it, even while pretending or affecting not to do so: ‘Most commentators have concentrated on the statistics and confusion within the Tory Party that the arithmetic of the European elections has caused. Nobody should be surprised by ...”

“... by the Congress Government at the centre to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, during the time when he rose to power. His extreme postures had started out as tactics in one kind of political game, and had hardened into the strategy of an altogether more sinister struggle: the Akali Dal could survive only by joining the fundamentalists who had been sent to destroy ...”

“... the earth, and the particles of their warmth, despairing, concentrated their last effort in a soft rose light along the western aspect of the strip of cloud. Down on the rocks a squat yew tree, clinging to the face, shivered and drew itself up. The shadows came together and lay cramped stiffly over it.   We turned our backs finally to the hills and began ...”

“... book draws to a close. Its title is accurate as to its content and style: ‘Diana. “You was a Rose in a Garden of Weeds.” ’ The impetuosity which explains the existence of the first part of the book damages the second, which is called ‘Voicing the Constitution’. Here Barnett sets out to ‘outline a case for reform’, opening with ‘a lengthy ...”