“... of time, we thought, as we strolled along the Namibia road. The afternoon came and went; night drew on; few cars passed; none stopped. We pitched the tent at the side of the road. I spent a sleepless night, worrying about marauding elephants and the encroaching unlawfulness of our presence in the country. Salvation arrived gratifyingly soon after the sun ...”

“... chevelures merging into one. The casting, the lighting and the face and body language that Millais drew out of his actors secured The Princes in the Tower an instant niche in Britain’s national image repertory, where it has remained ever since. Millais’s portraiture could grapple confidently with the auras of the mighty: Tennyson, Gladstone, Disraeli. He ...”

“... imprint, thus launching himself onto the public stage. He was the impresario who galvanised and drew support from the other players in this drama: the Imagists – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Richard Aldington, T.E. Hulme, F.S. Flint, John Gould Fletcher, Amy Lowell – as well as scores more who had a stake in the continuing vitality of literature, including ...”

“... is well aware of the cultural baggage the horse was carrying with him: the ‘little horse’ drew more newspaper coverage in 1938 than Roosevelt, Hitler or Mussolini; ‘Seabiscuit Day’ at Santa Anita brought the largest attendance in the track’s history; and in 1940 the ‘Seabiscuit’ ladies’ hat was all the rage, while the film The Life of ...”

“... are not unresolved in this way, nor are Degas’s, or Moore’s come to that, or even David Smith’s. It can be argued that this lack of poise is a positive thing, part of Epstein’s style, but it seems probable that, at best, it will in the end be judged a provincialism, akin to Hogarth’s ramshackle perspective. Although Gardiner insists that ...”

“... The adjacent bedroom had been turned into a drop-in dormitory for young boys and as the night drew on it filled up. At regular intervals the office door would be pushed ajar and a bashful face would appear. A few words would be exchanged in Zulu or Sotho – Lafont spoke both – and a frail figure in torn shorts and a grubby singlet would slip ...”

“... Cuneiform studies have come far since 1872, when George Smith, assistant keeper in the Oriental Department of the British Museum, engrossed the December meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology with a paper on ‘The Chaldean Account of the Deluge’. Among the tablets recovered from Assurbanipal’s library at Nineveh he had found an account of a world-wide flood which resembled the narrative of Genesis not only in its main outline but even in detail ...”

“... late 20th century, which would be news to, say, Charity Cannon Willard, whose 1936 MA thesis at Smith College was the start of a lifetime dedicated to de Pizan’s thought. And in her choice of Astell and Wollstonecraft, Penaluna opts for two women philosophers who have been the subjects of much important scholarship; her chapter on Astell, for ...”

“... of Ireland by French revolutionary armies in 1796 and 1798, and the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which drew support from both the oppressed Catholic peasantry and radical Presbyterians in Ulster.Stafford insists that there was more to union than ‘counter-revolutionary realpolitik’. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment had noticed parallels between ...”

“... Angola and South Africa, negotiated by Ronald Reagan’s point man for Africa, Chester Crocker, drew the Cold War to an end in Southern Africa, well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fourteen months after the agreement, Mandela was released. It is remarkable, but seldom acknowledged, that the superpowers walked away from apartheid, leaving South Africans ...”

“... of the sorts of punishment meted out to new recruits by midshipmen:The Mids, as oft as John drew nearTo stare about him, seemed to sneer,For John as soon as e’er they saw,They knew was but a ‘Johnny Raw’.As Johnny sleeps on deck, his mattress is ‘lugged clean from under him’ by a neatly thrown fish-hook and line; his clothes are stolen and ...”

“... state is no more than a highly inconvenient and thus insignificant truth. The Scottish jurist T.B. Smith took the Union at face value and refused to accept the subaltern status of Scots law within what had become by default a Greater English state. Why, Smith asked, did Section 70 of the Army Act of 1955 incorporate the ...”

“... had hold of my hand: ‘Sorry, did you say you were Paul from Romania?’ He released the mitt and drew himself up somewhat. ‘Paul of Romania.’ I burbled something about it being dreadfully noisy in here, he unbent a little and produced from his inside pocket an enticing brochure about real estate in the Seychelles. Well, I mean to say, a sprig of Balkan ...”

“... over by P.W. Botha, who has since become prime minister of South Africa.Botha’s committee drew up major proposals for constitutional reform which have been endorsed both by the Cabinet and by the four provincial congresses of the National Party, whose structure and importance are discussed in a fascinating chapter on Afrikanerpolitics, ‘How the ...”

“... in England’. I do not know what led Lowe to believe that ‘the great public schools that drew pupils from all over England came later.’ Whitehead went to Sherborne at the age of 15 and in due course became head of the school, a member of the cricket eleven and captain of the rugby fifteen. Professor Lowe’s conception of the old-fashioned public ...”