“... perhaps millions, of the estimated fifty billion migratory birds that annually leave their winter shelters in Africa to summer in Europe.’ And this, on forests in the early 13th century: ‘They were still extensive and home to wolves, wild boars and, outside of England, bears, but they were also dotted with little endogamous woodland communities ...”

“... Churchill back into the Cabinet at the age of 82, and then, as Britain settled down to a morose winter of Suez-induced petrol rationing, going off to recover his health in the West Indies, not only provoking popular outrage but opening the door to a Cabinet coup. Even after that he continued for years to dream that he might return to politics at the ...”

“... outside the hotel gates. ‘What can we do?’ he asked. ‘We don’t have any chance.’ Last winter, in a converted military barracks outside Phnom Penh, the first real trial began of those who masterminded the genocide of 1975-79. Coming 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the trial may seem a bit late. The five Khmer Rouge suspects facing ...”

“... declared, quoting Pasternak. Here she distinguished herself from her contemporaries: poets like Robert Creeley, Jack Spicer and Paul Blackburn often harked back to fraternal tropes of the knight, troubadour, jongleur. Never king. Guest’s origins were anything but kingly: born in North Carolina in 1920, she was shuffled around from town to town in ...”

“... about the Renaissance portrait, held at the conservative Metropolitan Museum of Art last winter, was revisionist enough to begin with relics and icons). It takes a wrecking ball to the popular notion of the Renaissance as both the death of the medieval and the rebirth of the ancient, for here the medieval persists into the early modern period and the ...”

“... about evacuees or eyeing the shortcomings of a nation besieged. His sets and costumes for Robert Helpmann’s ballet Miracle in the Gorbals of 1944 were generally agreed to be the only things worth remembering about it. He attended rehearsals at Sadler’s Wells: ‘2 sharp pokes with broken bottles in the face then followed a sort of descent de la ...”

“... Amara, more than 11,000 British Indian soldiers were besieged by Turkish troops through the bitter winter of 1915-16. Outside the city walls, numerous relief efforts were fumbled, costing more than 20,000 casualties; inside them, hundreds died before the remnant surrendered in April 1916, only to suffer a punishing captivity. Like many set-piece imperial ...”

“... movement, which reduced union leaders’ ability to moderate the pay demands of their members. As Robert Taylor observes in his contribution to Crines and Hickson’s book, the unions were too weak institutionally to play the role Wilson required of them; and their historic commitment to free collective bargaining was irreconcilable with the corporatist ...”

“... coup? The moment passed, but, hard as it is now to believe, in the wake of the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978-79 many rank-and-file trade unionists saw union power as a greater threat to democracy than Margaret Thatcher, and voted Tory in 1979. The subdued American Bicentennial of 1976 had taken place in the shadow of Watergate, presided ...”

“... in the tamest example, they are ordered to eat ice cream and then punished for doing so. After one winter session in the swampy woods of Georgia, Alex returns to barracks and watches a fellow cadet pull off his socks along with the skin from the soles of his feet. Another time, Alex fractures a leg. The last phases of his training are relatively ...”

“... to the possibility – and it shows up.’ Her poems first came to light when she sent them to Robert Hayden, the first African American poet laureate. She won a Discovery Award, which was presented at the 92nd Street Y, followed by a dinner in Claudette Colbert’s apartment. This prize led to the publication in 1969 of Good Times – the first of ...”

“... of self-enchantment, a ripple in time from our ancestors outfacing the cold, dark harbingers of winter with heat and light. And what better way to make light than with fireworks? Even the lid of the box was gaudily thrilling, like a fairground or circus. And beneath lay a tessellated array of shapes in comic-book colours, with daring names like ...”

“... One was for Ferdinando Wainman, a member of the Virginia Governor’s Council; another for Robert Hunt, the church’s first minister and chaplain of the expedition that founded Jamestown. Hunt was an Anglican, naturally, given that the town was established in 1607 not just as a commercial plantation and trading post, but as a bulwark of Protestant ...”

“... that he had to be housed in a derelict tennis court, had torn it from its socket and eaten it); Robert Crabbe had lost several toes, which I did not think too serious until he explained they were required for balance (I understood balance in the negative context of not having enough of it, hence those shameful safety wheels fastened to my bicycle).At some ...”

“... Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg 1933-1948, or fictional autobiographies such as Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, or Danny Hill: Memoirs of a Prominent Gentleman (edited by Francis King) and Margaret Forster’s ‘edition’ of Thackeray’s Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman, the book mingled respected literary figures still alive in Britain ...”