“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the majority. He argues that climate change is the ‘cumulative effect of action at the level of class’ and that this fact, rather than a generalised and undifferentiated sense of human responsibility, ought to be the criterion for action. To sceptical ears this might sound like a doomed attempt to square the circle, or nostalgia for political ...”

“... which is also an ancient aesthetic adjective …Frederica stared almost wildly at the class, which stared back at her, and then smiled, a common smile of pleasure and understanding. For the rest of her life, she came back and back to this moment, the change in the air, the pricking of the hairs, of really reading every word of something she had ...”

“... way: the plans were shelved by Clarke’s successor, Michael Howard, in order to ‘avoid all-out war with the police’.After Labour came to power in 1997, the Blair government offered the police a new settlement. Funding increased by a quarter between 2001 and 2010, and there were a range of new powers such as ASBOs, in return for more stringent performance ...”

“... Review crowd (Marxism, Freudianism, alienation, modernism, the Bomb, the Lonely Crowd, the Cold War, the existential abyss), she would have secured a position as a valuable member of the firm, Hannah Arendt’s natural successor. But being young, avid and a member of the Pepsi generation, Sontag wanted to experience art corporeally, immersively, in the ...”

“... time-proofing them. McCormick’s more Marxist view rightly underlines the importance of social class and property for Machiavelli, who observes in the Discourses that in Rome the grandi happily ceded honours to the plebeians, ‘but when it came to property, always defended it with the utmost obstinacy’. In Savonarola’s Florentine republic of 1494-98 ...”

“... Ninety-nine per cent of my friends have died like that.’ ‘The individuals of our ruling class’ have made ‘society sacrifice itself for them’. ‘We feel pain every minute of the day’ – at the lack of democracy – ‘and it’s worse than the pain of hunger. Democracy here is on the same level [of necessity] as the food we eat.’ And, on ...”

“... Yet in each case, he belongs to a non-marginal institution. In Austen, the navy, at a time of war. In Tolstoy, the army, bulwark of the tsar. In Eça and Alas, the church, at a time when its position in Portuguese and Spanish society was a subject of political contention.A final commonality: all four authors expect readers to know what is being referred ...”