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“... sceptical of these denials, as she is of those of Mansfield’s ‘wife’, the ever-devoted Ida Baker whom Mansfield referred to variously as ‘Jones’, ‘the Mountain’ and ‘the slave’, whom she said often she hated and once said she thought of shooting with her revolver, and whom she would not allow to touch her. This modern ‘we know ...”

“... of isolated individuals, moving through time and space like ‘rogue electrons’. Following Keith Baker, Gildea means to study instead the ‘set of discourses and practices’ used by one community ‘to articulate and enforce its claims against those of rival communities’ and to define ‘the identity and boundaries of the community to which they belong ...”

“... rides through Ealing, Leeds and Southampton, and in 1910, A Trip on the Metropolitan Railway from Baker St to Uxbridge and Aylesbury. Starling’s art has frequently involved the reconstruction or repurposing of ramshackle machines. In 2005 he won the Turner Prize with Shedboatshed, rebuilding a tumbledown hut from the banks of the Rhine as a small ...”

“... Soviet Union. Earlier, on a visit to Moscow, the British Secretary of State for Education, Kenneth Baker, received from a group of Soviet historians a surprise proposal to organise a joint examination of Soviet history books with English historians, in order to improve the writing of Soviet history after so many years of toeing the Communist Party line. The ...”

“... to flame still more than to ice, to the kind of illumination that can reduce lives to ashes. Mary George of Allnorthover, Greenlaw’s first novel, looks at these things from a different perspective. Fiction holds out the possibility of a larger and more diverse readership than poetry can provide, and gives Greenlaw an opportunity to connect her writing with ...”

“... as oil supplies are a legitimate concern for an American president. Imagine what would happen if George W. – or any other American president bent on intervention in the Middle East – not only said he wasn’t concerned with America’s oil supplies but actually meant it. Hyam and Henshaw write sensitively and with great perspicacity about the pretend ...”

“... can in many ways be as disgraceful as resignations. The leading figure here is Kenneth Baker, who perfected a theory about why he should slay as Home Secretary despite the succession of calamities that surrounded him, until he was eventually jettisoned by the Prime Minister after the 1992 election. Holding steadfastly to the view that policy was ...”

“... of those who bought their rank from James I, or of war profiteers who wrote fat cheques to Lloyd George. Keeping faith with the hereditary principle has not always been easy. We are treated to a whole chapter about a peer who owed his seat in the Lords to being the product of a virgin birth, which might be thought the highest qualification of all. This is ...”

“... for may not be there. Comics come off worse than straight actors (Harry Lauder makes it but not George Robey, Tommy Handley, or Morecambe and Wise). So in other fields. Bobby Charlton is in; Geoff Boycott isn’t. Piggott but not Carson. John Williams (the guitarist) but not Shirley. Healey but not Howe. John Le Carré but not Naipaul or Storey. Bud Powell ...”

“... a state of emotional paralysis, and resolved that with a fatal jump from a window. Of tough-guy George Bancroft, for a few years Mr Underworld supreme and then, to his bewilderment, totally eclipsed by Cagney and co as gangster films hit their stride. Of a child-star called Baby Richard Headrick: dunked in a fountain thirty times in an afternoon, shivering ...”

“... traveller’s perspective to a fictional analysis of England and Englishness. His main character, George Grey, is English through and through, from his taste in shirts (Jermyn Street, handmade ‘in a faded, denimy sort of blue’, with his name sewn into the collars ‘like a school boy’), to his taste in food (Fray Bentos steak-and-kidney puddings, heated ...”

“... title refers to the assurance on the limits of Nato expansion given to Mikhail Gorbachev by James Baker, then US secretary of state, in 1990. The Soviet Union had stationed troops in East Germany since the liberation of Berlin; in 1990 they numbered 380,000. Gorbachev was in a strong position militarily. In all other respects, however, he was weak. Sarotte ...”

“... open the door to territorial compromise and sent a private message to the US Secretary of State George Shultz in a bid to subvert it. George Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, were much less tolerant of Shamir’s stonewalling than Reagan and Shultz had been. The eight-year ...”

“... a lecturer from Iowa, who has produced this fine biography. Mary Kingsley was the daughter of George Kingsley, the younger brother of Charles. The DNB gallantly falsifies the date of George’s marriage, which was only four days before Mary’s birth. His wife (thought to have been his cook) was a competent ...”

“... he said. ‘The police commandos arrested 15 people from here last night including the local baker. I am sitting here in my house with a Kalashnikov and 60 bullets and if they come for me I am going to open fire.’ It is strange to hear George Bush and John Reid deny that a civil war is going on, given that so many ...”