“... was: that bloodied face, the hero’s grimace, the whole thing like a campaign advert directed by John Ford. In Milwaukee, I bumped into Robert Auth, a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, who began telling me and a Swedish journalist that the Republican Party had always been all about surviving and staying on course. ‘We’re shocked,’ he ...”

“... with some interesting annotations. These annotations, I can now reveal, are in the hand of Sir John Puckering, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. This is a new fact, though not a surprising one. Puckering took a particular interest in what we might today call ‘state security’, and together with another high-ranking ...”

“... the private sector sets aside for corporate sheen, although it does have a museum dedicated to John Charnley, who, almost half a century ago, pioneered the popular benchmark of the NHS’s success or failure, the hip replacement operation. They still do hips at Wrightington, and knees, and elbows, and shoulders. They deal with joint problems that are too ...”

“... 11 July 1921 and, after preliminary discussions between de Valera and Lloyd George, negotiations took place in London between 11 October and 6 December of that year. De Valera remained in Dublin, however; the negotiating team was made up of Griffith, its leader, Collins and three others. The delegates were appointed plenipotentiaries, but with instructions ...”

“... the help he got from Gamlin. Forbes wrote to him at the BBC – at the time Forbes’s name was John Theobald Clarke – and Gamlin wrote back, telling Forbes that his letter was so extraordinary he would have to meet him. When they met Gamlin said it would be necessary for him to change his name. ‘Another young actor, ahead of me,’ Forbes wrote years ...”

“... about the way they were policed. The early London Metropolitan Police Special Branch, which took most of the responsibility for counter-subversion before MI5 muscled in on it, relied heavily on both – India for its officers, Ireland for its other ranks; MI5, which was staffed mainly by officers, similarly relied very largely on the colonies. Andrew ...”

“... Italian hilltop towns and dined under the stars. After the war she moved to London and in 1946 took a job at the International African Institute, editing Africa, an anthropological journal, and worked there until she retired, writing her fiction in her spare time. A busy London life included regular churchgoing. Readers could now make the obvious ...”

“... on her work as worthy of parody – not just recognisable, but recognised. When Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare secured her a civil list pension in 1923, Mew couldn’t decide whether it was more ‘like a dream or a nightmare’. Such diffidence also contained defiance. Her public readings were bracing affairs – ‘like having ...”

“... total eclipse of the Sun. Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe: The Hidden History of the Women Who Took the Measure of the Stars begins in the late 19th century, following the story of the women (and a few men, too) who worked at the Harvard College Observatory computing the location and brightness of the stars. Many of these women progressed from being ...”

“... traces the labyrinthine paths into which Russell’s adherence to the theory of internal relations took him, and then presents the twists and turns that were necessary before he could abandon it. Though his book is for the most part rigorously, not to say relentlessly philosophical Griffin devotes the first three chapters to an account of Russell’s life up ...”

“... her die. God please make her not die. I’ll do anything you say if you don’t let her die. You took the baby but don’t let her die. That was all right but don’t let her die. Please, please, dear God, don’t let her die. In the last line of the book he leaves the hospital and walks back to the hotel in the rain. The reader watches him go and worries ...”

“... in the personal financial benefits or social status of being a director.’ The reassessment never took place, at least not in the form of a coherent plan in the interests of the game and its grass roots. In anticipation of the 1992 TV bonanza, the First Division clubs plotted to break away from the Football League, but for that they needed the FA’s ...”

“... with the publication in 2003 of its magisterial sixth volume, written by the general editor, John Baker, and covering the years 1483-1558. It then went back to the beginning, with R.H. Helmholz’s opening volume on early canon law. The rest was silence, until in 2010 the series sailed suddenly and magnificently into port without any of the remaining ...”

“... Neat penetrates the various legends put about by Henderson, who didn’t at all mind if people took him for the bastard son of the eighth or ninth Duke of Atholl, the Duke of Argyll or various other contenders, including an unnamed Italian count and diverse novelists and officers, Irish as well as Scots. Henderson, we are told, understood ‘the mystery of ...”

“... then complain about your wages.’ Hammond was an original, a poor farm boy with no parents who took every chance he was offered (along with quite a few he wasn’t) and rose to become a celebrated performing rider in the bullrings of Spain. He kept a journal assiduously as he went, and wrote up his Memoirs in four volumes with hand-drawn ...”