“... make the cascade of factual claims in the book – claims that Lovelock uses to disparage ‘green’ policies, such as moves towards renewable sources of energy – feel rather shaky. Since Lovelock introduced the Gaia theory, about forty years ago, our picture of the history of the Earth has become more eventful, less a story of stability and more one ...”

“... head, Tim Reilly, in an office with leather chairs and an oak dining table covered in a green baize cloth. ‘Lugovoi arrived with shopping bags … [and] steered the conversation round to tea. He suggested they all drink some, joking that the English had cups of tea all the time. Reilly declined and told them he’d just drunk water from the ...”

“... not only on one politician or party, and least of all on the Civil Service and the executive. Peter Jenkins of the Guardian was the first to get it right, when he told a protest rally: ‘This is Parliament’s war!’ The end of the Falklands affair was not difficult to condemn either. The problem of the islands had been rendered far more ...”

“... mixed with water at 1:4 – then combine them in equal measure. That mixture creates an acid green light-sensitive liquid, which you can use to coat anything that will absorb it – paper, fabric and so on. You apply it in low light, leave it to dry in the dark, then expose it to sunlight in combination with whatever it is you want to print.If you want ...”

“... will flash by.’ We cut to her point of view and, through the car’s rear window, see the pale green two-storey house receding down the quiet street. Then, unpredictably, we cut to a shot from inside the empty house: through the middle of three tall bay windows, past a green tree overhanging the road, the car can be seen ...”

“... position was that the injuries must have been inflicted after the suspects were remanded to Winson Green prison. The prison officers’ position was silence. The men’s position was that they had been assaulted both at the police station and at the prison. The distinction was important because if it could be demonstrated that the assaults had occurred in ...”

“... were ‘infested with tigers’. But – like the late antique holy men studied by the historian Peter Brown – these gurus remained involved with the societies they had fled. In the years before his trip to Chicago, Datta went far beyond Bengal, visiting Hinduism’s holiest places. Like the Buddhist lama in Kipling’s Kim, whose ‘search’ for a holy ...”

“... a miraculous matching of hope and past and present and possibility. Striding across the fresh, green land. The rhythms of perception heightened. The whole enterprise of consciousness accelerated. We were gods that morning ... We marched as far as – where was it? – Glenties! All of 23 miles in one day. And it was there, in Phelan’s pub, that we got ...”

“... to the reader: A song on an oppressive night ... The moon is plating with bright Metal the dark-green cut-outs it has made. ... A song; like an echo, so alive Buried under bushes down the drive ... – If’s stopped: Look, he’s there, in the shade ... – A toad! – Why this fear and trembling With me here, your faithful conscript! See him, poet ...”

“... their way through the charred rubble of the Erechtheum, they were amazed to discover a fresh green shoot already 18 inches long, growing from the smoking remains of the sacred olive, Athena’s gift to the Athenians in an ancient auction for the city, a successful counter-bid against Poseidon’s unimaginative spring and the mother of all trees. Cuttings ...”

“... that she gave up her plans to work at the Oxford Mission among the factory girls of Bethnal Green. Her mother’s disapproval of her choice of an architect of uncertain social origins and a German name perhaps strengthened her resolve. (Lady Edith soon became close to her son-in-law, who designed her a wonderful house, Homewood, on the Knebworth ...”

“... It was​ in a Quonset hut south of the Potomac that Peter Matthiessen met James Jesus Angleton, ‘a cadaverous, hawk-boned man with dark hair, large elfin ears and a lively intelligent face behind horn-rimmed glasses’, as Matthiessen later described him in an unpublished account of his recruitment to the CIA in the autumn of 1950 ...”

“... ultimately be judged and defined by what he does.’ A journalist who may be closer to events, Peter Snowdon ends his book on a more equivocal note: ‘If the last four and a half years have been testing for Cameron’s Conservative Party,’ he writes, ‘the next few will be far harder, whether the party wins or loses.’ Not that Snowdon is in any doubt ...”

“... on as usual. Names central to Renaissance scholarship appear on page after page – Thomas More, Peter Giles, Martin Dorpius, Pirckheimer, Amerbach, Tunstall, Lascaris, Zazius. So do the names of people for whom Erasmus scholars feel especial warmth – Grocyn, say, or William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who put up with a great deal, for Erasmus ...”

“... using all our senses, as well as spending time in archives, and the editors here – Simon Gunn, Peter Mandler and Otto Saumarez Smith – clearly told their contributors something similar. Like its predecessor, this collection is variable but sparkly, travelling down scholarly alleyways and shooting light into one forgotten corner after another. Best read ...”