“... on leave in December, and they were married by special licence on Christmas Eve. During the war Agatha worked first as a VAD, then as a dispenser in the hospital at Torquay. In September 1918 Archie was posted to London; a daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919; and in 1920 Hercule Poirot made his first appearance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Two ...”

“... us with a box of tricks uniquely guaranteed to ensure permanent prosperity. When the long post-war boom, of which he was allegedly the ‘onlie begetter’, was succeeded in the 1970s by the disconcerting phenomenon of stagflation, the devil theory caught on, whereby Keynes was in turn arraigned as the architect of our misfortunes. A further variant was to ...”

“... at the beginning of the 11th century by a Japanese court lady. The novel is twice the length of War and Peace, and no generation of writers in Japan has been able to ignore it. Genji has been admired, attacked and imitated, some ten thousand books have been written about it and countless articles dedicated to it in the past 950 years. We know from the ...”

“... cells for its swarming bees. It might describe the exciting battle for the elevators; the war of the nameless and numberless guests, known only by their numbers. It might describe the gallant ally of 55783, who succeeded in seizing and working the 32nd lift; the heroic conduct of 62017, in bringing up an armful of yams and sweet potatoes by the ...”

“... the line was carved deep into law, politics, culture and the national psyche. Rather than declare war, Britain justified her claim to sovereignty over Australia by the doctrine of terra nullius. It was a case of first come, first served for the European powers, especially when the native inhabitants proved insufficiently organised (not recognisably human ...”

“... possibility of an American revolution in the British Caribbean seemed so unlikely at the time. A war of attrition of the sort that delivered independence for the thirteen colonies would be impossible in a situation where the slave population outnumbered the settlers by between eight and twelve to one. Historically, the British in the West Indies relied on ...”

“... of capital to eliminate all competition.Born in 1942, Manchette grew up during France’s colonial war against Algeria and joined the Communist Party as a teenager. His youthful activism prompted him to attempt a politicisation of the noir, which he claimed had the potential to be ‘the great moral literature of our time. Indeed … it is the most suitable ...”

“... one had to. We were in the church where Martin Luther King declared his opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967. We were honouring the life of America’s leading free jazz musician in a dramatic week for freedom in America. The Supreme Court had ruled five to four in favour of gay marriage; at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, Obama ...”

“... favourite film of all time is probably Braveheart,’ and this cinematic ideal of the just war, the virtuous warrior, the martyrdom of an outnumbered hero, kept propelling him to parts of the world where he felt that brave, honest Muslims were standing up to bullies. As it turned out, Begg, who almost joined the British Army in his late teens, wasn’t ...”

“... the labels reveal less about Russia than about the inability of commentators to loosen the Cold War’s lingering hold on their thinking. Luke Harding was the Guardian correspondent in Russia between 2007 and 2011 who last February was turned back at Domodedovo Airport and told that his presence in the country was no longer welcome. An editorial in the ...”

“... least not for a long time.’ Auerbach’s great book Mimesis was written in Istanbul during World War Two, published in German in 1946, and in English in 1953; there was an anniversary edition of the translation in 2003, with an introduction by Edward Said. Mimesis is an indispensable point of reference for anyone interested in comparative literature, close ...”

“... were exempt from most cleaning duties and were not subject to what I, as an ex-private first class in the US army, would have called the KP (kitchen police). Einjährige could chose their own regiments, but had at the end of their year to pass a stiff examination before the regiment’s entire complement of officers. Kessler thoroughly enjoyed his period ...”

“... in which the mind had repudiated its rights, leaving matter and the senses to take over. In middle-class society, men thought having a mistress just as much a fashionable necessity as ‘taking the waters, sea-bathing, and going to first nights’; while kept women, like ‘female minotaurs’, were ‘devouring’ France’s young men. There was also the ...”

“... set … not because we disliked them … but because they had brains and understood finance. As a class, we did not like brains.’ On this front, Bertie fitted in just fine. He never read a book if he could avoid it. Shortly before his coronation, he needed an operation to lance an abscess, brought on by gorging on hard lobster. While convalescing, Ridley ...”

“... The mentality it describes is not universal in Mennonism nor confined to it. In an age of holy war, Toews’s protagonists have plenty of spiritual cousins. Mennonites began arriving in North America in the 17th century, with big migratory waves in the late 19th century and again after the First World War, as Prussian ...”