“... In a period of changing governments and political and economic instability Parliament itself may well have welcomed this anchorage, as ministers and policies came and went. Although in 1929 Lord Chief Justice Hewart (who had previously been a member of the Government as Attorney-General) published The New Despotism, fulminating at the impotence of the ...”

“... If Marilyn Monroe was his dream lover – ‘every man’s love affair with America’ – and Ernest Hemingway his idea of a self-like literary champ, it might also be said that his astronauts, his boxers, his single-minded karmie killers, his existential heroes, Greenwich Village idiots, his political ogres and saints, his high-minded Trillings, turncoat ...”

“... counties, while also disputing that it had a uniformly depressive effect on wages. Be that as it may, the new Poor Law that was enacted in 1834 involved an attempt to apply the laws of the market more strictly to the ‘commodity’ of labour. There was to be no outdoor relief for the able-bodied; they were to be incentivised to find work by the prospect of ...”

“... was calmer and more forthright: he simply called the system late capitalism, after the book by Ernest Mandel, the Belgian Trotskyist, which provided the base, as it were, to his own cultural superstructure. Mandel’s Late Capitalism (1972) had offered a magnificently confident and pugnacious argument about the nature of postwar capitalism, but he ...”

“... or another. Yet even from the restricted sample quoted something else, not so easily classified, may spring to the eye. Most such ethno-nationalist conflicts seem to happen in predominantly rural situations. Nor are they rural merely in the sense of being agricultural or non-urban – like East Anglia, say, or the Beauce plain in central France – they are ...”

“... credentials; another option, second-best, slightly wishy-washy, is ‘Northern Ireland’. He may also be attracted to ‘United’ to point up the disarray of his enemies or to mask his own difficulties. ‘Official’ is useful for the old guard, ‘Independent’ good for those striking out, who also seem fond of ‘Progressive’, ‘Popular’ and ...”

“... diver after all’s Done, still held fast in the weeds’ snare below ... My sudden struggle may have dragged down some White lily from the air – and now the fishes come. Meyers argues that the 20-year-old Frost chose the Dismal Swamp because other poets had written about it, and that Frost intended only to make a dramatic point to Elinor by ...”

“... of naval intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Fleming undertook a secret mission to Washington in May 1941. He was ‘whisked off to a room in the new annexe of the embassy, locked in with a pen and paper and the necessities of life’, a colleague recalled, and there he wrote, ‘under armed guard around the clock, a document of some seventy pages covering ...”

“... after taking the overdose: I am ready for death though I fear it. Of course the whole thing may not work and I shall wake up. I don’t really mind either way. Once the decision seems inevitable the courage needed was less than I thought. I don’t quite believe anything has happened though the bottle is empty. At the moment I feel very much ...”

“... on the military plan with firearms, request that you proceed with the military option which may include the use of lethal force for the preservation of life.’ This was questionable language in which to couch what was supposedly an instruction to arrest. All the contradictions and inconsistencies in this sequence of events would be instantly resolved ...”

“... and was cheered through the streets of London before being defeated in the Battle of Lincoln in May 1217 and then the Battle of Sandwich in August, perhaps the first ever battle fought by sailing ships in the open sea.Even the fiasco of the last significant French landing, at Fishguard in 1797, had momentous consequences. The fifteen hundred French ...”

“... stepping into the fray as Docs’ Joshua, sums up the feeling best when he says here: ‘Hunter may be the reincarnation of Lono – the God returned after 1500 years of wandering like a lovesick child to save his people – and his beloved American Constitution ... He is your saviour and he is guardian of all you profess to hold dear. In his weirdness he ...”

“... supported her lover H.D. and her husband Robert McAlmon, who published Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and Ernest Hemingway. There is also the suggestion, never quite substantiated by Souhami, that the way these women lived, their promiscuity and outsized influence, could itself be considered uniquely modern, that this was the age of the ‘international daisy ...”

“... fear death?’ he was heard to say. ‘It is the most beautiful adventure in life.’ He may have been echoing J.M. Barrie, whose ‘awfully big adventure’ had only recently chimed with children of all ages. But the immediate circumstances – shipwreck, showmanship, early death – also bring to mind the life and career of Robert Louis ...”