“... for a huge splenetic autobiography, denigrating everyone I’ve ever known: it would have to be left to the nation in large brass-bound boxes, to be printed when all of us are dead.’ In the event he arranged to have his diaries shredded a few days before his death in 1985. But there was enough spleen and denigration ...”

“... inauguration of Barack Obama, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black man, was shot in the back by a white transit officer in Oakland, California while lying face down on a train platform with his hands behind his back. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died seven hours later. Minutes before, Grant and several other men had been herded from a ...”

“... Tess, who lived with her, behaved as if shopping (and having things) was the only way not to be a nobody. Alexis never forgot there was gold in them there hills and she spent her late teens trying to establish contacts that would lift her into the Hollywood scene. The family did pole-dancing in the living room and Andrea gave the girls – including ...”

“... of the Second World War is a history of retreating. Occasionally, the retreats were punctuated by large-scale counter-attacks – Rommel at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia; Operation Autumn Mist in December 1944 – but whether they liked it or not, the German forces generally had to move backwards. This history is nevertheless seldom treated as one of ...”

“... think with the telephone that if I concentrate enough I could pour myself into it and I’d be turned into a mist and I would rematerialise in the room of the person I’m talking to.’ That’s more or less how people get to the House of Holes – a sexual spa resort, offering expensive bespoke treatments, located in a parallel dimension. Almost any ...”

“... One of the few​ facts of American history of which Donald Trump appears to be aware is that George Washington owned slaves. Trump mentioned this in 2017 as one reason for his opposition to the removal of the monuments to Confederate generals that dot the southern landscape. In Trump’s view owning slaves probably enhances Washington’s reputation: like him, the first president knew how to make a buck ...”

“... of confirming gestation. It wasn’t until 1927 that scientists detected HCG, a hormone produced by the placenta after implantation, in pregnant women’s urine. The first pregnancy test involved injecting baby rats with a sample: if HCG was present, the rats, despite their immaturity, started to behave as though they were on heat. Before this, diagnosis ...”

“... had expected to see, an empty clearing. The old man’s body was no longer there. His dust would be mingling with the dust of the place, would not be washed by the seeping rains into the field. The wind by now had taken his ashes, dropped them and ...”

“... of a bygone age? Doesn’t it seem a bit authoritarian? The student suspicion of lectures might be one reason universities are increasingly keen to get rid of the job title ‘lecturer’, and make everyone some kind of (assistant, associate) ‘professor’. Until a stroke forced him to retire at the age of 57, Eric Griffiths was a lecturer in English at ...”

“... their houseboys were shouting at them to get out of the building. Barbara suggested it might be an earthquake but Mary disagreed and said that the boys were ‘overreacting’: it was only a ‘tremor’. So they went on with their chicken curry and its accompaniment of cucumbers, tomatoes and nuts. As a split opened down the wall, Hosking ‘felt a ...”

“... Parliament. When she announced, late in the evening of 29 October 1553, that Philip would be her husband and king, England was horrified. It was widely felt that she had put religion and familial sentiment above the national interest: many believed that, with this foreign monarch at its head, the country risked becoming a Catholic satrapy of the ...”

“... speed, seemingly unstoppably. Its ranks swelled and swelled with new recruits impressed by the scale of its victories. Supporters travelled in large numbers from North Africa and Europe to become part of the society it had pledged to create. Strict justice, revolutionary energy, old prophecies fulfilled: its millenarian ideology included plenty that ...”

“... of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest ...”

“... more than two hundred drawings are almost universally accepted today as being wholly or in part by his hand, and most experts would argue for a much higher figure. Substantial though these numbers are, it is clear that only a tiny fraction of the drawings that he produced has survived. For example, there are famous studies of individual figures on the ...”

“... great-grandchildren’. Not long to wait. Others are less sanguine. The history of philosophy can be cause for dismay. We are, after all, still asking questions Plato asked 2500 years ago. What is knowledge? What is justice? What is a name? In the ‘linguistic turn’ of the mid-20th century, such inquiries were interpreted as calling for investigation of ...”