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“... even than Rhodes. It was the greatest siege in history.’ Catherine’s constable, Anne de Montmorency, had been arguing for Rhodes, but even he had to concede that more guns had been fired, more mines dug, at Malta. La Roche, who was present at the siege, though he played an inglorious part in Malta’s defence, virtually recommending ...”

“... Amanda Bailey’s Shakespeare on Consent argues that sexual choice is problematic because of the power imbalances not just between genders but between racial groups, inequalities that have led down the years to a disproportionate number of accusations of sexual assault being made against black men in America (she teaches at the University of Maryland). Any ...”

“... in the small company of those – Byron, Nijinsky, Valentino, the last Prince of Wales – with power over the sexual imaginations of millions. Like an incubus, the Olivier of the Thirties and Forties could enter the dreams of the young, the reveries of the less young, and bring them to orgasm. Had he lived three centuries earlier, he might have risked ...”

“... being written for those to whom the world is new and strange, for those who are without economic power, and for those who need short, sharp, bold stories, children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning. But you cannot claim to be a magician and ...”

“... to his wife. I do not believe it bears that meaning at all. Disraeli obviously had a row with Mary Anne, spent a night elsewhere, lied about his destination and squared his sister about his whereabouts. ‘I am rather confused and shaky,’ he writes, ‘having had a bad night in a strange bed.’ The suggestion that he was sleeping with some unnamed lady or ...”

“... have been the relative social and gender equality of Dutch society which encouraged those holding power to seek to ‘accentuate the symbols of their hegemony and the respect due to their guardianship’. The coherence of the ruling class, and the close relations between patron and artist, both in assertive mood, lend credence to her thesis. The ...”

“... the aura of its double pre-eminence. The halo of an unmatched concentration of national life and power radiates around it. The reality of the country, however, exceeds its capital more deeply and vividly than the reality of England exceeds London. Not France, but the regnant bulk of the United Kingdom, embracing 84 per cent of its population, is by far the ...”

“... Africa ceased to be a country where races were segregated by law. Yet no one in a position of power was called to account for the relegation of millions of South Africans to derelict Bantustans, the forcible removal of hundreds of thousands of non-white urban dwellers to shanty towns and rural areas, the coercive discrimination in every aspect of public ...”

“... They are not in a position to participate in Iraqi domestic life or understand the detail of local power and society. Things are not much better when organisations rely on middle-class or English-speaking Iraqis for information. It is not only Ahmed Chalabi who proved to have little idea about the situation in Iraq. Saddam’s regime worked hard to fragment ...”

“... information we have concerns leases, wills, marriage lines, property. His pillow-talk with Anne Hathaway, Emilia Lanier or Mr W. H., interesting as it may have been, was not recorded. If you want to discuss Shakespeare, you have to depend on reading and seeing his work. Not so with Brecht. Not only did he write a great deal of commentary himself. All ...”

“... of crushing banality: ‘The 17th century was a most exciting time, with its shifts in political power, and with its rise and fall of kings, there was, predictably enough, a rise and fall in the fortunes of many of the subjects.’ Again: ‘While the emerging middle class was in general looking more to reading as a source of information, enlightenment and ...”

“... liberal writers who believe that everything went wrong in Israel after Mr Begin came to power in 1977. Before then, there had of course been problems, but it had been possible to believe in the Zionist dream and to be inspired to assist in its fulfilment. The Army had been imbued from the beginning with a chivalrous ethos known as ‘purity of ...”

“... relic of times past, and in 1947 he contracted his last and apparently happiest marriage – to Anne Sullivan, a young, beautiful, spirited Irish Canadian almost as rich as he. Ridley’s protective attitude toward his subject is so undisguised as to be endearing. He paints him as a model of the aristocratic ideal, and explains away or skims over the rough ...”

“... point of view – a free invention of the case for Lady Caroline Lamb, say, or better still, for Anne Milbanke, his contemptuous lordship’s ‘princess of parallelograms’, a gifted lady who would have been better-off keeping house with an affectionate algebraist than shacking up in marital misery with a soda-swilling, sodomising monster. Speak as you ...”

“... it turned out, the British people could live quite serenely with being a second-rate ex-colonial power, but they would not stand for Altrincham’s mild lèse-majesté. He was subjected to even more abuse from the British press and public than Nasser or John Foster Dulles. In a widely photographed incident, Altrincham was physically assaulted. His assailant ...”