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“... In​ 1863 extracts from the journal of the Hon. Impulsia Gushington were published under the title Lispings from Low Latitudes. Impulsia had joined the fad for Egyptian travel and enjoyed an English lady’s usual adventures with camels, pyramids and cunning Orientals. Finally, she fell for the charms of a French aristocrat, Monsieur de Rataplan, and a sequel was promised that would detail the adventures of the lovestruck pair ...”

“... When we think​ of the fashions of the 1890s, several objects come to mind: the tennis racquet, the golfing cap, the Daily Mail, a full-length Singer Sargent portrait, The Diary of a Nobody. In 1896, A. & C. Black purchased the rights to a dull annual almanac called Who’s Who and relaunched it the following year in a format designed to appeal to contemporary taste ...”

“... On 21 December​ 1859 John Tyndall, a professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, set out to measure the structure and movements of the Mer de Glace, a glacier above Chamonix. In previous summers he had collected data on several Alpine glaciers, but no one had ever attempted to do so in winter. He got to Folkestone but bad weather meant crossing the Channel was impossible and he returned to London ...”

“... The clue​ is in the name. Parliament is designed for talk – for the expression of opinion and criticism. Pundits, particularly in the 19th century, wrote about ‘parliamentary government’ as the nation’s pride and Britain’s gift to a less fortunate world, but they did not mean that Parliament should actually govern. It would zealously check an overmighty executive, and scrutinise hasty ideas, but was not in itself a decisive body ...”

“... The quirkiest​ of the British Isles is a self-governing jurisdiction between Guernsey and France just over three miles long and less than two miles wide. Sark has its own parliament, its own taxes and its own traffic laws (permitting only tractors, bikes and horse-drawn vehicles). Its central, fertile plateau is protected by cliffs on almost all sides that rise to over three hundred feet ...”

“... One​ can imagine the dilemma this sound narrative history posed to a publisher looking for a catchy title. Even so, The First Cold War is an unhelpful one. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain and Russia did not seek to divide the world between them and very rarely pointed weapons at each other. Russia fought almost two dozen wars after 1783, but only the Crimean War of 1854-56 and the brief Anglo-Russian war of 1807 involved combat with Britain ...”

“... and triggered by controversy about financial rewards given to two Tory MPs, Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. This was when the select committee and the role of parliamentary commissioner were established, together with an extra-parliamentary Committee on Standards in Public Life. The latter drew up seven principles of public life ...”

“... It​ all seems very familiar. In the aftermath of a global financial shock, politicians found that the way they liked to communicate – expansive, optimistic rhetoric about democratic possibilities – no longer sounded convincing. Belt-tightening was needed. A Labour government which had already boxed itself into the language of prudence was removed as politicians plotted to find a way of combining austerity with authority ...”

“... To​ have one brother killed by an African animal would be a misfortune. To lose two, at different times, is surely remarkable. Such was the distinction of Sir Edward Grey, who served as foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916. A lion got his brother George, who was hunting in British East Africa in 1911: excited for the kill, he galloped too near his prey, missed and was mauled ...”

“... Since​ 2008, the LGBT Labour merchandising department has had massive success selling ‘Never Kissed a Tory’ T-shirts. They have generated so much fuss that in 2018 Owen Jones had to make clear: ‘If you want to kiss Tories, Momentum are not going to stop you.’ However, to large swathes of the left, the idea of doing so has remained anathema (the former lord mayor of Sheffield ruled it out, in his ‘Ten Commandments’ for the city ...”

“... Early​ in July 1853, eighty thousand Russian troops crossed the River Pruth and invaded the Ottoman Empire. By 15 July they had occupied Bucharest, the capital of Ottoman Wallachia, as well as its other major towns. It was an unprovoked attack, justified on spurious grounds: Tsar Nicholas I claimed that more than ten million Orthodox Christians were imperilled by the indifference and barbarism of their Ottoman overlords ...”

“... through his zealotry, restless ambition and ignorance, single-handedly proceeded to destroy it. Jonathan Parry also provides a forceful celebration of a particular kind of political system, which he sees as achieving perfection under the ‘propertied but unsnobbish’ Whig Ministers who ruled the country in early and mid-Victorian Britain. To anyone ...”

“... Neal Ascherson, Mary Beard, Jonathan Coe, Tom Crewe, William Davies, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Lorna Finlayson, Daniel Finn, Katrina Forrester, Jeremy Harding, Daisy Hildyard, Colin Kidd, James Meek, Ferdinand Mount, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Parry, David RuncimanNeal Ascherson‘On​ 17 June poor France fell ...”

“... at which to turn to Death and the Regeneration of Life, a collection of essays edited by Bloch and Jonathan Parry, who also teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics. The essays examine mortuary rituals in a variety of primitive and traditional societies throughout the world. This is an outstanding collection. The ethnography is both detailed ...”

“... such an on-off affair, so fractious, elusive, splattered with froideurs and reconciliations. Jonathan Parry, a specialist in the 19th century, finds that his fellow historians have taken astonishingly little interest in British tangles in the Middle East in the first half of that century, though the relationship was then at its most intense. In ...”