“... 1788. It is the kind of subject that would inspire a less devious civilisation-chronicler like James Michener to epic slabs of narrative and at least two thousand pages, sweeping us from the formation of the continental land mass to Paul Hogan’s amber nectar ads. But Keneally habitually sidles into his big subjects, illuminating them indirectly by odd ...”

“... thought it was so funny – I started it, having picked it up from something I’d been reading by James Kelman. Death, death, death, death, death, death, death.I met her in September 1989, on my first day at City Limits, the co-operatively run London entertainments magazine set up by the leftier of the Time Out journalists after a long and bitter strike. It ...”

“... and has never been humanly feasible.’ ‘At home – chez soi – one is a potentate; one may grant an outsider relief from the outside; and this must be what I yearn for.’ ‘I think that what I’ve wanted, most of all, is someone nice and safe to hang out with.’ Plus, despite his failure to reproduce with Jenn, ‘I have always wanted ...”

“... ear and with a grease spot on his vest, who refuses to engage either in intellectual chat about James Joyce or religious debate about the identity of God. A bird-shaped stain on the ceiling above Asbury’s bed assumes the role of spiritual catalyst at the story’s conclusion, tearing ‘the last film of illusion’ from his eyes and bringing him face to ...”

“... Stumbling​ out of the pouring rain on the Isle of Skye, James Boswell and Samuel Johnson found a welcome in the house of Allan MacDonald at Kingsburgh. Dr Johnson had developed a nasty cold; Boswell was wet and thirsty and delighted to get indoors. ‘There was a comfortable parlour,’ he wrote in his journal in the autumn of 1773, ‘with a good fire, and a dram of admirable Hollands gin went round ...”

“... and founder of the League of Coloured Peoples, a British civil rights organisation; C.L.R. James, the Trinidadian author of The Black Jacobins; and Una Marson, another Jamaican, the founding producer of the BBC’s Caribbean Voices and the first Black woman to have a play staged in the West End. The Windrush carried a new sort of immigrant, however ...”

“... coronation, the Guardian flourished its discovery of a document recording Edward Colston’s grant to William III of shares in the Royal African Company, which shipped more enslaved people across the Atlantic than any other organisation. It was an embarrassing but hardly revelatory find: the king was the company’s titular governor and historians have ...”

“... restore it as a working cinema. Last year, Friends of the Broadway Prestwick, which had secured a grant to bring the building into community ownership, opened the foyer to the public. The octagonal ticket booth was still standing, gift-wrapped in chrome ribbons. The project development officer, Kyle Macfarlane, pointed out to me the red and black Art Deco ...”

“... on literature produced by functionaries of the British Empire – Mungo Park on Central Africa, James Cook and Joseph Banks on the Pacific Islands, William Jones on India – and shared their assumptions about civilisational development. Progress was measured by the extent to which a society exploited its land efficiently, and by the relative predominance ...”

“... standard British male. ‘If he wasn’t a member of the royal family,’ the astrologer Russell Grant said, ‘his ideal role would be running a beach bar in the sun – with the odd blue movie being shown at the back.’ Among the prince’s early girlfriends were Koo ‘Starkers’ Stark and Vicki Hodge, an actress whose better-known works include The ...”

“... look at her dear child before it was consigned to the earth’. The magistrate was unable to grant him the warrant, however, and he referred Fogle to the St James parish authorities, whose duty it was to see that an inquest was held on any person who had died suddenly. But the parish had no record of Crachami’s ...”

“... COP to write something for my paper, I told them, which that morning had published two pieces (by James Butler and Adam Tooze) about Andreas Malm, the Swedish climate theorist and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Malm says it’s time, I said, for climate campaigners to move on from XR-type theatrics to disciplined sabotage of fossil-fuel ...”

“... his prerogative; for this Melchizedek is Priest of the Most High God. The bread and wine, plus the grant of a tenth (or tithe) of all produce he received from a grateful Abraham, have resounded through the songs, liturgical practices and ambitions of clergy ever since. Most High God, El-Elyon: he is the chief and perennial inhabitant of this scruffy town in ...”

“... Act making it a crime to publish false criticism of the Government or its leaders – and that James Madison, the principal author of the First Amendment, had condemned the Act. It was a violation, he said, not only of the freedom of speech and press but of the whole premise of our new Constitution: that the people were to make the ultimate political ...”

“... English lessons and a few translations. Of that sum, £175 came from Pound’s initiatives (a grant from the Civil List, a subvention from the Society of Authors and an anonymous donation). The rest came from Harriet Weaver, who retroactively paid Joyce £50 for the serialisation of A Portrait and £25 in advance for the serialisation of Ulysses. These ...”