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“... VI and those of the dauphin. For the English to finish the war, they needed to cross the Loire barrier by seizing one of the bridge towns. The one they selected was Orléans, and the siege began on 4 September 1428. At this point of near victory, Joan of Arc arrived. Also known as Jeannette, La Pucelle or the Maid of Orléans, she was the daughter of a ...”

“... tanks didn’t counsel prudence. In the run-up to the war, RUSI’s director of military science, Michael Codner (King’s via the US Naval War College in Rhode Island), described it as ‘an intervention of choice designed to make the world on balance a safer and better place’. Britain was involved, Codner wrote, because ‘one of successive British ...”

“... Is there anything stranger than a pop star out of time? Before Elvis Presley, before Michael Jackson, there was Al Jolson – ‘the most popular entertainer of the first half of the 20th century,’ as Michael Rogin describes him. Eyes wide and mouth agape, arms outstretched and face painted black, Jolson concludes his performance in The Jazz Singer (1927) down on one knee, serenading the delighted actress who plays his mother in a voice as strong and piercing as a foghorn ...”

“... to be fed up with the Democrats’ inability to get bills through Congress.In What It Took to Win, Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’. Kazin has been engaged with Democratic politics since 1960, when, at the age of twelve, he sported a large campaign button for John ...”

“... designed to sidestep nationality restrictions. The complex web of bilateral arrangements is a barrier to the creation of new airlines or consolidation among existing ones. The Chicago system also counts against airlines from developing nations whose governments don’t have the negotiating strength to win landing rights at prestigious destinations such as ...”

“... art is quite another matter: altogether more ambitious and probing. Out of D.S. Chambers and Michael Baxandall and some Italian scholars Robinson measures up Pound’s ideas about the right relation between artist and patron against what we know of how patronage in fact worked in the ducal fiefs of Renaissance Italy; and when he deals with the closeness ...”

“... extends to providing a living definition of civilisation applicable beyond any kind of national barrier, including that of language – and now that he is dead the living definition becomes more alive than ever. When the book with a capital ‘b’ finally materialises, those readers who absorbed its component volumes as they came out are apt to be loud in ...”

“... notes) Vol. – Volunteer – Thomas Ashe, who died in Mountjoy Prison 25 September 1917, to Vol. Michael Devine, INLA, who died in the Maze 20 August 1981. Above is a dove of peace caged in barbed wire; below the quote: ‘I’ll wear no convict’s uniform, nor meekly serve my time.’ Less ringing, and not attributed to the IRA, is the nearby Bloody Sunday ...”

“... march inland and install a new emperor. The British, while welcoming the prospect of a monarchical barrier against American expansionism, were content for the French to bear the risk of an invasion from which they abstained. Maximilian was the perfect pawn for Napoleon’s ambitions. With his height, forked beard and protruding jaw, he was the spitting image ...”

“... with a media whose quarrel with Corbyn has been described by a former chair of the BBC Trust, Michael Lyons, as ‘quite extraordinary’. The favourite – and perhaps the most persistent – of the many lines of attack employed so far is the charge of antisemitism. No one has yet produced any evidence either that antisemitism is more prevalent in the ...”

“... bad weather. Three years ago, millimetre-wave links ‘would go down when someone sneezed’, says Michael Persico, whose Chicago firm, Anova Technologies, uses these links. Even today, they tend to stop working in heavy rain. So Anova has begun to use lasers to supplement its millimetre waves. Lasers have vulnerabilities too (fog is a big problem), but Anova ...”

“... being taught how to swing their arms while marching (and talking), runs slap against the plywood barrier. As a precaution, the authorities have painted a white line around the former boating lake in Victoria Park, along with a helpful notice: CAUTION WATER. You can’t be too careful of this stuff, this alien medium. Comb off the algae carpet, the scum, and ...”

“... firmly in the non-intervention doctrine often disagree on the validity of counter-intervention. Michael Walter, whose Just and Unjust Wars is among the most sensitive extended efforts of recent years to apply concepts of morality to the use of force, provides a vivid example of the difficulties this issue presents. Walzer claims to believe firmly in the ...”

“... of a trade that was facing new and unfamiliar challenges saw these young publishers as saviours. Michael Howard, Jonathan Cape’s vice-regent for ten years, entitled the last section of his 1971 history of the firm ‘Regeneration’. It opens with Maschler’s arrival and ends with his ascent – aged 37 – to the chairmanship. Howard concludes: ‘I ...”

“... mariners probed further and further down the African coast, passing in 1434 the terrifying barrier of Cape Bojador, and preparing the way for the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 and Vasco da Gama’s arrival in the Indian Ocean ten years later. The first steps towards Atlantic colonisation were taken by the Portuguese in ...”