“... cultural narcissism.’ At a commissioning meeting ‘two non-fiction debuts are given the green light with almost indecent eagerness – one, a book on new motherhood, another on why the author made the “life choice” of not becoming a mother. Both by white women, Ayush notes; reproduction is clearly hot.’ Even when a subject is historically ...”

“... badly than they wanted any aspect of the complicated and ongoing story he’d worked to bring to light. Only the Guardian was publishing substantive material on GCHQ and the NSA. The government had circulated a Defence Advisory Notice, an official request – not enforceable but usually adhered to voluntarily – that ‘further developments’ on the ...”

“... his life,I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heavenand radiant with the sight of his dead wife,light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,‘not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie’.I thought how his cold tongue burst into flamebut only literally, which makes me sorry,sorry for his sake there’s no Heaven to reach.I get it all from Earth my ...”

“... if they take on all exceptions to their rule. Inspired by their reading of social anthropology, Alan Macfarlane and Keith Thomas explained the increase in accusations of witchcraft in early modern England as a result of late 16th-century social and economic change. Steadily, though, incongruent cases gathered in drifts, even though there was only a modest ...”

“... well-read men of different generations. There is rather too much cricket for my own taste, but Alan Ross – perhaps the only writer on cricket I can assimilate – is extolled early on as ‘the first poet’ to report an MCC tour in Australia. Hart-Davis, professionally involved, has naturally a special point of view, and a wider tolerance (seasoned with ...”

“... closely, not just because of Chris, or because it was a little of my own past that was coming to light, but because I recognised the names of some of the ex-pupils and teachers who spoke to the press: those who were happy to get stuck into the lying and smearing, but also those who defended him. I kept getting reeled in by things I half-recognised, things ...”

“... but how many musicals are great films? Or, speaking of moments, the killing of Jack Palance by Alan Ladd in Shane is exquisite, but Shane as a whole is a phoney. (But its director, George Stevens, did direct a musical that’s a serious candidate for greatness: Swing Time.) And the problem of evaluating the makers is vastly complicated, as it is with the ...”

“... building and landscaping that has gone on over the last thirty years the only skeleton to come to light belonged to a 17th-century donkey. And, in Jersey at least, a wealth of documentation and eyewitness reports testify to the fact that standard procedures were followed in collecting the bodies of OT workers, issuing death certificates and burying them at ...”

“... drunk, Macleod demanded a short game of stud poker before sleep of his friend and superior officer Alan Dawtry. Dawtry ticked him off for drinking and said he was going to bed. Macleod, incensed, announced, ‘I’m going to shoot you!’ and drawing his service revolver, began blasting away at the lock on Dawtry’s bedroom door. Finally he charged the door ...”

“... Arthur Mitchell, who farms in the Ixopo area of KwaZulu-Natal among the beautiful hills in which Alan Paton set Cry, the Beloved Country. He said that he’d bought the farm mainly because he wanted to build it up for his son, Michael, who worked alongside him. But a month ago he’d driven into Ixopo to get some provisions when the farm radio in his bakkie ...”

“... though one of her legs was two and a half inches shorter than the other. In the 1930s, the young Alan Turing went skinny-dipping off the rocks, photographed by an enthusiastic housemaster.Sark’s appeal remains its rugged coastal scenery, sunshine, peacefulness, birds, butterflies, dolphins and absence of carbon monoxide. Artists have come for 150 ...”

“... Art Scene in London, which featured several of her paintings. Its curator, the art historian David Alan Mellor, had been fascinated by the subject in general and by Boty in particular since, as a 13-year-old, he saw Ken Russell’s television film Pop Goes the Easel. Shown as part of the arts series Monitor in 1962, it purported to follow a day in the life of ...”

“... pre-Christian (and not especially evil) pagan deities. ‘Lucifer’ comes from the Latin for ‘light-bearer’, a sobriquet commonly applied to Venus (and on occasion, Mercury). Belzebuth is better known as Beelzebub, the ‘Lord of the Flies’, which would appear to be an insulting mistranslation into Hebrew of the name of a Philistine god: the original ...”

“... to the world of non-being. The Manichees declared that there were two worlds, the world of light created by God and the world of darkness created by the devil. Augustine himself became a Manichee for 11 years because he was disturbed by the existence of evil in a world made by God. Only gradually did he come to believe that God created everything and ...”

“... blow. The episode seems to have been the target of contemporary satire: ‘And it was only a light punch’; ‘Indeed it was, by Jove; if you hadn’t held back, your arm would have smashed right through the animal’s hide, bones and guts.’ Alexander was disgusted, Lucian says, with Aristobulus’ fabrications and threw the volume in the ...”