“... possibly benign Italians instead of the certainly murderous Germans. They succeeded, and spent the war in a Calabrian internment camp until they were liberated by the British Eighth Army and headed north with it as translators. By the time they had to earn a living in Texas, they had Italian and Serbo-Croat and colloquial English, in addition to very good ...”

“... parts of the world, where secondary effects such as economic disruption, disease, famine and war will be experienced most acutely. Climate change is therefore likely to have a disproportionate impact on the vulnerable and exacerbate existing inequalities. A mid-range increase in global temperatures, which might be quite pleasant in Canada, is potentially ...”

“... The Act instructs the board to take into consideration, not just the literary merit but also the class of reader which may reasonably be expected to read each book. So, as the writer Lee Dunne would point out fifty years later, ‘A book that is clean at five pounds is dirty at fifty pence.’ Members of the Catholic Truth Society, established to assist the ...”

“... the shifting military strategies and dynastic disputes of the Roman Empire for a generation. The war-weary Goths were after money. ‘Far from being a bloodbath,’ Brown writes, ‘the Visigothic sack of Rome was a chillingly well-conducted act of spoliation.’ Many grandees, their mansions shattered and looted, abandoned the no longer Eternal City and ...”

“... to be held back by his well-meaning mother, who didn’t want her son to be the littlest in the class. At school, he made several attempts to set up underground newspapers, but he also won an essay competition with a work entitled ‘What the Flag Means to Me’. He could be difficult and rebellious; or he could be surprisingly conformist. He even ...”

“... but an objective criterion: these days it is what the right-wing press says ‘works’. The war on drugs doesn’t work; nor does building more prisons; nor, one suspects, will many of the anti-terror laws. But that doesn’t stop ministers from pursuing all of them vigorously. New Labour in practice is much more wedded to what-works politics than the ...”

“... 1941’ (‘Burgled’), to ‘Sophia Tolstoy’s Carpal Tunnels, 1863’ (‘After transcribing War and Peace for the ninth time, Sophia Tolstoy lifted her wrists to the sky, tried to unball her fingers, and let her numb fists fall to the table: “I’m Sorry”’), before depositing us at last in front of ‘Lincoln’s Mirror, 1865’: What you are ...”

“... Segalen back into view, as a writer of obvious significance for the post-colonialist critics whose war-chants are currently rising into the sky from our throbbing campuses. In its dry and orderly way Forsdick’s book does an excellent job in situating him, with the ‘Essay on Exoticism’ as its main focus, in relation to the arguments of Edward Said and ...”

“... of history. The Lithuanians had at first run into a wall of hatred from the Scottish working class who perceived them, not entirely without reason, as cheap foreign labour brought in to collapse miners’ wages. The Italian community was utterly unprepared for the ferocious anti-Italian riots which flamed through Scottish towns and cities in July ...”

“... time I did make trial of my strength of fancy of that kind’. The pride was that of a world-class wanker, an inveterate fantasist delighting in imaginary ‘sport’ with bevies of accommodating lovelies, including Mrs Steward, Charles II’s inamorata, and the queen (even in fantasy, Pepys was a staunch royalist). ‘The best that was ever ...”

“... me I ought to be one. In my primary school in China in the mid-1980s, the most ferocious person in class was a girl. She used to carry a tree branch to beat boys with and absolutely no one dared to offend her. Our desks were designed for two, usually a girl and a boy; the better student was supposed to help their neighbour. We drew a line (called the ‘38th ...”

“... in Northern Ireland to research and write the article, I realised that the Catholics are second-class citizens. They live in terrible slums, in poverty, and know no way of improving their conditions. I have not set a novel in Northern Ireland simply because I do not know enough about it. I dislike cant – you get that from politicians. Writers have to dig ...”

“... nudge from the British government. Now he began to grasp the imperial mindset. The British ruling class – and most of the British public – did not know who the Americans were, and did not want to know. From now on, he became a tireless propagandist for the colonies. In 1766, he testified eloquently to the House of Commons against the Stamp Act, and helped ...”

“... have used very different words. His language was only appropriate for distinguishing between one class of Jewish immigrant and another. Peters’s assertion that the report was here speaking ‘unmistakably of “other than Jewish labour” ’ is quite simply untrue. That heading is on a different passage. Besides, the Arabs whom Ms Peters portrays as ...”

“... to inherit. Most colonial possessions, Morocco included, won independence in the thick of the Cold War. Whether they opted for a socialist model or a Western-style arrangement, they were able to spin disappearances, torture and maiming as regrettable features of state formation, much as the colonial powers had described them as instruments of progress.Aziz ...”