“... in the Caucasus have had no effect. He permitted himself to be bounced into sending troops into North Ossetia to keep that Russian autonomous republic within the bounds of the constitution, then withdrew them 24 hours later with nothing achieved except that the hand of the new ruler, General Dudaev, had been strengthened. He has been unable to stop ...”

“... cosmos, an integral factor in a prolonged, and possibly insoluble, post-colonial schizophrenia? Paul Johnson’s book is lively, well-informed and often provocative; his standpoint allows little space for nuances. His ‘crucial developments’ are the troubles themselves; the ‘shared experiences’ (one thinks of those thousands of Irishmen who ...”

“... and waning of the Ice Age. It is the coast that creates the past. The ancients knew this. As Paul Kosmin points out, ‘history begins on the shore, and there it finds its limit.’ Herodotus, the first to record the results of historical ‘inquiries’ in the late fifth century bce, begins by surveying a series of legends of Phoenician, Trojan and ...”

“... Spanish Earth but includes much film noir, while finding its ultimate expression in Citizen Kane. Paul Robeson isn’t the only headline performer: he is supported by Billie Holliday and even Duke Ellington. Indeed, Denning argues that because ‘Pop Frontism’ was less a particular worldview than a set of emotional responses, Elia Kazan can be seen as ...”

“... these are the relevant facts: this rubbish heap of details is the past, the London under London. Paul Sayer works as a staff nurse in a psychiatric hospital. The Comforts of Madness is an extended imaginary exposure to what the wretches under his care feel. Peter is a long-term catatonic patient, and the novel takes the form of his interior ...”

“... product of his time and place and the inventor of his own world. Popa was born in 1922 in an area north of Belgrade called Banat, where the population was a mixture of Serbs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians and Romanians. His father was a record clerk and afterwards worked for a bank; his mother was a housewife. He went to school in the town of Vrsac, and in his ...”

“... months he gained an immense following, not only in the Ottoman Empire but among Jews throughout North Africa, Europe and Central Asia. He also attracted quite a few non-Jewish adherents. The Sultan, fearing that Sabbatai might be trying to usurp his power, had him arrested and incarcerated in the Dardanelles, first in the notorious Bagno prison, then in ...”

“... in Westminster Hall and claim it as his own. Richard’s empty throne stands at the heart of Paul Strohm’s fine study of the textual consequences of the Lancastrian usurpation. It is both a material presence, a space to be occupied and defended by the victorious Henry, and a permanent void, a metonym for the legitimacy that the early Lancastrian kings ...”

“... time to pull down their cowshed and build a visitors’ centre. At the Vatican, however, Pope John Paul II disregarded a petition to complete Hildegard’s formal canonisation process (aborted in 1243) and declare her a doctor of the Church. Evidently, this most uppity of medieval women is not a model the Pope wants to raise up for emulation in the new ...”

“... and police between 1954 and 1962 during the Algerian War. In November 2000, two former generals, Paul Aussaresses and Jacques Massu, made long declarations to Le Monde, in which they admitted that men under their command had tortured suspects and killed prisoners. Massu expressed his regret, said he no longer believed that such violence was a necessary part ...”

“... opened the way to her simplistic truths: Victorian values and all the rest. Mark Hollingsworth and Paul Halloran describe the way Mark took over the marketing of his mother’s memoirs, and almost completely messed it up. At one stage an experienced literary agent, George Greenfield, was brought in to advise, but found himself ‘constantly interrupted by Mrs ...”

“... up to 73,741, or nearly 60 per cent. The gross casualty rates among British infantry fighting in North-West Europe in 1944-45 could be even higher – in the 15th Division, 62.9 per cent of men, 72 per cent of officers – but ‘only’ 16.8 of the former and 28.7 per cent of the latter were killed. The death rate in bombers was exceptional. Charles ...”

“... blood [apparently Klee had let slip that his mother’s family may have come originally from North Africa], but is a typical Galician Jew. He paints ever more madly, he bluffs and bewilders [er blufft und verblüfft], his students are gaping with wide-open eyes and mouths, a new, unheard-of art makes its entrance in the Rhineland. Klee himself was ...”

“... sentence for assaulting a nine-year-old relative: They release you from prison at 10.55 a.m. The North East is bright and sunny [as it often isn’t]. Your mission [as you explained it to another prisoner] is to get the gun, shoot Sam, shoot her new boyfriend, shoot Sam’s mum for trying to split you up, shoot the social worker who pissed you off, shoot the ...”

“... of railways. He visited the medieval towns of Yaroslavl and Smolensk, went deep into Siberia and north to the Solovetsky islands, and travelled south to Bukhara and Samarkand, Central Asian cities colonised over the preceding century. He photographed churches and monasteries, factories and waterways, landscapes and natural wonders, famous people ...”