“... types: the Huichol are taciturn inhabitants of the high desert of the Sierra Madre Occidental in North-West Mexico, celebrated in anthropological literature for an annual journey to obtain the hallucinogenic peyote cactus for their shamanic rites, long in contact with and resistant to Christian influence; while the Panare are genial ...”

“... public sector. They are more geographically concentrated than at any time since Sharp’s day: in North and North-West London, and in English university towns. The once substantial Scottish readership, and that in Britain’s former colonies, have almost vanished. What remains is a shrunken core group, but one which is ...”

“... defence, tried to turn a defeat into a rhetorical victory, dressing up a humiliating ambush by the North Vietnamese army as an American triumph. The Washington press corps dutifully reported the official Pentagon version of events. A US navy captain called Mark Hill, who was working on a project for McNamara, eventually let Hersh in on the real, catastrophic ...”

“... high modernism of the interwar years, as introduced by émigrés from fascist Germany, is inner North-West London: the borough of Camden, and to a lesser extent Westminster, Barnet and Brent, with Hampstead and Highgate at the epicentre. It is here that you can find the major buildings of Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton, the houses of Connell, Ward and ...”

“... other preoccupation is the widening rift in Europe – France especially – between citizens of North African descent and the rest. Todd holds the rest largely responsible for this polarisation and the dangers that attend it. His book is a brilliant piece of wishful thinking, in which the rediscovery of equality and the reconciliation of believers with ...”

“... was clearly affronted by the sight of the Brazilians being frustrated by the scarlet-clad men of North Korea and so we got such gems as ‘and now Robinho’s sinuous swerve is blocked by yet another red robot.’ No one has asked Sir Terry what he thinks about the threatened strikes but it might be very entertaining if someone only would.26 June. South ...”

“... south through the Brenner Pass, the Allies hoped in vain that he would halt at a defensive line north of Rome, knowing that they lacked the strength to meet massed Wehrmacht ranks head on.As Allied troops learned to fight within their means, the rains set in, churning up the strade bianche, and the advance slowed. Men of the British 8th Army, used to racing ...”

“... metal or reinforced concrete frames. Demolitions of a slower kind are depicted in an exhibition of Paul Hester’s photographs of Houston, ‘The Elusive City’, shown at the Menil Collection, the serenely long and luminous museum by Renzo Piano which is one of Houston’s most treasured resources. Hester’s vision is rather at odds with it: he has a clever ...”

“... my offer of a place at college, packed up my red rucksack, and took a National Express coach up north. It wasn’t enough that I was saved: I wanted to save other people. I had decided to become an evangelist. I went to work for an evangelical missionary organisation, one of whose many purposes and functions was to train young people to spread the good ...”

“... by the 19th century, when the French imaginaire was dominated by a Near East which included North Africa, and when the term croisade had long been at home in the French language (the English and German equivalents did not appear until the 18th century), the French saw the crusades as historically theirs, and French scholars dominated the ...”

“... towards the young Jewish state, but made its reservations plain. In an article published in 1958, Paul Ricoeur challenged the claims of André Neher, a fellow contributor to L’Esprit, that the accession of Jews to biblical lands anchored an ‘essence’ of Jewishness. ‘Is this essence you invoke,’ Ricoeur asked Neher, ‘which in your view founds your ...”

“... customers at our butcher’s shop. Like Professor Needham, Mrs Kettle denounced the invasion of North Korea by the Americans and their use of germ warfare, not a view I’d then seen put forward. I was at the meeting not because of any left-wing views, but because the war was of some personal interest to me, as in 1952 I was due to be conscripted and likely ...”

“... The river makes its way through traprock and sandstone to the level plain of the city, continues north to Hawthorne, then doubles back on itself and begins its southerly flow to Newark Bay, about twenty-five miles through manufacturing and industrial towns and suburbs, places like Garfield, Lyndhurst, Kearny and Harrison, where it hooks east, then south ...”

“... few of those in authority did. In their introduction to this important collection of documents, Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang point out the ‘gulf of mutual incomprehension’ that separated ministers and civil servants from ‘the broad mass of the British public’. Ordinary MPs and the press thought they had a better grasp of popular opinion, but they ...”

“... called James Reeves McCullers, Jr. They married when she was 20 and he was 24, and set up house in North Carolina. The detail that somehow sticks with you is that she wore knee-high socks to the wedding. At first glance, Carson and Reeves seem like the last people who should have entered into a heterosexual covenant. Despite Carson’s remark that Reeves was ...”