“... in favour of ‘traveller’, except when uninhabited tracts such as Antarctica are referred to. Cook was a genuine explorer when he scythed across high southern latitudes proving that there was no land, and no inhabitants, in an area where geographers had hypothesised a great southern continent. In the Pacific, he travelled, or ‘voyaged’, over seas ...”

“... about capitalism or racism, your own complicity in both or either. Whether you are aunt or wife or cook or freemartin, all women are equally oppressed.Nowhere in the constitution of this utopia does it say that although yes, of course, it’s true that women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy most certainly are under attack in the US at present, the ...”

“... of al-Qaida before 11 September 2001. All of this echoed other wrongful detentions, like that of John Walker in 1974, when the West Midlands police coerced an innocent Irishman into confessing that he was an IRA ‘brigadier’, ignorant of the fact that such a title existed only in the British army. This confession was nevertheless swallowed whole. Walker ...”

“... secretary to executive in Don’s team, the first woman to do so since the war; Roger Sterling (John Slattery), the urbane old-money wit and rake who runs Accounts; Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), the spoiled, petulant, baby-faced young scion of neo-aristocratic New Netherlanders, also Accounts; and Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), who, from the ...”

“... realist? His engagement with the Communist Party – he had been a leader of the Chicago John Reed Club, the CPUSA writers’ group, and published journalism in The New Masses – contributed, but Wright’s relationship with the party had always been stormy, particularly when it came to aesthetics. His 1937 manifesto, ‘Blueprint for Negro ...”

“... Virginia Woolf​ wasn’t sure what she felt when she heard that Katherine Mansfield was dead. The cook, ‘in her sensational way’, had broken the news to her at breakfast: ‘Mrs Murry’s dead! It says so in the paper!’At that one feels – what? A shock of relief? – a rival the less? Then confusion at feeling so little – then, gradually, blankness & disappointment; then a depression which I could not rouse myself from all that day ...”

“... was small by local standards (even so, in 1934 the Selwyns employed at least 11 men, including a cook and houseboy, two of them Suk – there were no female servants). Coffee was added to the staple of maize and there were some dairy cows. But the early 1930s was not a good time to be farming in Kenya, or anywhere else. In the Depression, the price of both ...”

“... he puts in the second stitch, and my feet start to bang, I realise that he is the young sheikh in John Huston’s Beat the Devil. He, too, is ruthless and unsmiling, and finding Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Robert Morley cast up on his shores, plans to have them all shot. Bogart, however, discovers the sheikh’s soft spot, a secret passion for Rita ...”

“... of the City of London. In 1603, a quarter of a century after bricks began to be manufactured here, John Stow described its buildings as ‘filthy cottages’. Since then, the area, whether one calls it Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, Banglatown, has been a byword for poverty and violence. ‘A land of blood and beer,’ a rector of Hawksmoor’s ...”

“... them of encouraging it. That year, under the leadership of the anti-Semitic former neo-Nazi John Tyndall, the Front launched a racist campaign aimed at schoolchildren called How to Spot a Red Teacher: ‘You can recognise them when they sneer at our White race and nation and everything that has made Britain great.’ In view of Ukip’s insistence that ...”

“... quality – a little like Weegee’s – at once random and composed. In one, the circus director John Ringling North dominates the right half of the frame, shouting instructions to an unseen person, while above and to the left a high-wire act has two showgirls suspended from the wheels of a bicycle: the picture frame is divided by a balancing bar carried by ...”

“... are survival emissions’ – thinking, perhaps, of the smoking cowpats over which Indian farmers cook their curry. In the preliminary haggling, more than a hundred developing countries claimed exemption from carbon emission capping, but some agreed to be compensated in return for absorbing more of the rich nations’ emissions. To a Republican-dominated US ...”

“... won admirers among the black writers who emerged during the Black Power era, such as LeRoi Jones, John A. Williams and Ishmael Reed. And his legacy now? As Jackson writes, ‘history has borne out some of his vinegary judgments.’ Today, Himes’s belief in the implacable force of white supremacism – what is now called Afro-pessimism – enjoys a growing ...”

“... prevailed. Roussel would order that the entire day’s meals, prepared by an Escoffier-trained cook, be served to him in what Ford calls a ‘single marathon sitting’. At 12.30 in the afternoon a lavish breakfast began, followed immediately around 1.15 by an extensive lunch, succeeded promptly by an early but immodest dinner. Each day Roussel rose from ...”

“... going into the city.’ People are moving in the opposite direction to find housing, according to John Ryan, who runs the Manchester office of the homeless charity Shelter: ‘People on the average wage can’t even dream of living in Manchester anymore, so are having to move out to places such as Rochdale, which then places pressure on the housing market in ...”