“... but, like Congreve’s secret, it was whispered everywhere (the postman and future home secretary Alan Johnson was aware that letters on his round were surreptitiously removed from the frame and taken upstairs). Photostats were made using pedal-operated cameras, later replaced with less cumbersome 35mm film and Kodak cameras. The copies were then couriered in ...”

“... invoking the idea of a transhistorical faculty bestowed on all black people from below the Mason-Dixon line.At times he seemed to treat Jim Crow as a mere nuisance. In a letter to Joseph Frank written not long after the debate with Howe, he speculated that in a recent lecture in Paris, Hughes ‘probably had to tell the French … how difficult it is for ...”