“... over burning coals until he was dead. Curry was drenched in oil and set on fire. As the flames rose he chanted ‘O Lord, I’m acomin’’ so loudly he could be heard all over town. Later that day the sheriff announced that two white men – brothers – had been detained in connection with the murder and that tracks from the scene of the crime led to ...”

“... Luther King Jr. Far from giving way in the face of moral example and legal right, racial injustice rose to fever pitch during the 1960s. The third and deadliest Ku Klux Klan (succeeding the Southern Klan of the late 1860s and the national Klan of the 1920s) dynamited churches where members of the black freedom struggle met. Klansmen beat and murdered civil ...”

“... Paul Ferdonnet and André Olbrecht, who recorded programmes in Stuttgart; in the States, ‘Tokyo Rose’, Mildred Gillars (‘Axis Sally’) and Ezra Pound, who was indicted for broadcasting from Italy; in Britain, John Amery and P.G. Wodehouse, who was cold-shouldered for giving a jaunty talk about life in his internment camp. Lord Haw-Haw was the most ...”

“... high, and imported Chinese ceramics to civilise their dwellings. The earthquake struck on 7 June 1692, just before noon. It rearranged the geology, splitting the rocks, turning mountains to lakes, and engulfing two-thirds of the town. On that day and subsequently, five thousand of the inhabitants died. This will teach the Europeans, said the moralising ...”

“... to that of a military force compelled to withdraw in the face of greatly superior numbers.’ In June, Nehru and his colleagues were released from imprisonment for the Quit India campaign during the war, and in the winter provincial and central elections were held, still on the suffrage of 1935. The result was, or should have been, a cold douche for ...”

“... out what was going on and to influence events. Helped by the high attrition rate among jihadis, he rose through the ranks and by the mid-1990s, after an intense power struggle with a rival commander, emerged as the leader of Harkat ul Jihad al Islami or HUJI, once described by a liberal Pakistan weekly as ‘the biggest jihadi outfit we know nothing ...”

“... Joyce noted that his father was drunk, and again on 31 May and 1 and 2 and 13 and 14 and 15 June. And on Sunday 24 June: ‘Pappie home to dinner very drunk: shouting, swearing etc. Pappie has thrown his dinner about the floor: Baby [the youngest of the family] white as a sheet: Pappie gone out again: home ...”

“... was 21 – Wilde was 36 – but their friendship did not begin until the following year. In May or June 1892 Wilde wrote to Ross: ‘Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus – so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on ...”

“... or Bill Clinton.’The beards were unimpressed. One of the few beardless men in the audience rose to his feet and addressed the Congressman: ‘Please answer honestly to our worries,’ he said. ‘In Afghanistan we helped you defeat the Red Army. You needed us then and we were very much loyal to you. Now you have abandoned us for India. Mr Clinton ...”

“... there so many apprehensions of ‘illegals’ (170,000 in the Tucson Sector from October 2009 to June 2010, for instance) and so few federal prosecutions in the state on drugs charges (1107 in the same period)? How is it that out of the half-million undocumented Hispanics in Arizona, fewer than 3000 are in state penitentiaries on drug offences? Why, in Pima ...”

“... Stuart was interviewed. He told the interviewer: ‘The Jew was always the worm that got into the rose and sickened it. Yes, but of course I take that as praise. I mean all those so-called healthy roses, they need exposing – many of them are sick.’ Interviewer: Are you ashamed that you helped Nazi Germany now? Stuart: Sorry? Interviewer: Are you ...”

“... commended in Lacan’s reading of Freud: they specifically excluded the psychological subject. In June 1964 Lacan founded the Freudian School. Unlike traditional psychoanalytic societies, it welcomed non-analysts as members. From its earliest days it was a meeting-place for mathematicians, philosophers, linguists, anthropologists and literary critics. It was ...”

“... acquire meaning later on, like the languorous shot in Le Cercle rouge of a barmaid handing a red rose to Corey, the robber played by Delon, just before he falls into a trap laid by the police. The minimalism of Melville’s films – and their indifference to psychological motivation and melodramatic convention – provoked comment that he was imitating ...”

“... economy continued to diversify. Unobtrusively, capital stock was modernised, productivity rose, and exports increased, from about $3-4 billion a year in 1981 to some $25 billion this year, yielding a positive trade balance and substantial reserves. By the mid-Nineties, the objective weight of the country in the new global order had altered. Richer and ...”

“... glacial career testified), whereas the unfashionable engineers had serious peacetime duties, rose faster and could transfer back at a higher rank in the event of war. The ploy worked. MacArthur was never much of an engineer, but he learned the basics of harbours, pontoons and bridges, knowledge which would one day come in handy on remote Pacific ...”