“... calculation would change for ever. The unlikely setting for the transformation – as detailed in George Dyson’s engaging history – was the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The institute had been founded in 1930 with funding from the department-store magnate Louis Bamberger and his sister, Caroline Bamberger Fuld. Advised by the education ...”

“... typology, Edward’s chosen status could be prefigured by depictions of Moses and the burning bush or of Saul on the road to Damascus – as they are in a striking piece of surviving Yorkist poster art, now in the British Library. In historical terms, Edward was the new Constantine, the British-born Emperor whose victories were preceded by a vision of the ...”

“... that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."’ Nouvel Observateur: ‘And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?’ Brzezinski: ‘What is more important in ...”

“... she is accompanying the Italian president to London to meet Jack Straw and she also translated for Bush on his visit to Italy last year. The library at the British Council is busy and full of students who only leave when it closes at 8 p.m., and seeing these young Italians reading English books and magazines, watching videos and generally finding this a ...”

“... ground and President Arafat to ensure broad participation and continued momentum – were passé. We were in a new era, and it required new thinking: ‘The road to Jerusalem now passes through Baghdad,’ the official insisted. He was speaking just before the 2003 invasion. The message was clear: the Islamic resistance in Palestine was to be neutralised, and ...”

“... would say into their mouthpieces: ‘Eagle One is on the move’? She would tell her investors: ‘We’re in a market for people who don’t like having a needle stuck in their arm.’ That is: her market was everyone who isn’t a masochist. She would say that doctors make treatment decisions based on blood tests – that’s inescapable. But what if you ...”

“... 81 seconds of their beating of King had been videotaped by a resident in a nearby apartment, George Holliday. What Holliday did with the tape was momentous. He did not hand it over to the Police. Had he done so, there would have been an internal tribunal, and most likely some stern disciplinary action. There might also have been judicial control over the ...”

“... shacks. His distrust of the police, someone said, was disturbing, but our fears proved groundless. We eventually reached our hotel, a palace of light, without any problem. Port-au-Prince is obviously very poor – more than half the population live in bidonvilles – but it is also vibrant and colourful, in the way such places often are, with kerbside ...”

“... 1931 as his text, Howell announced that a white prince (the Duke of Gloucester, who represented George V at the coronation) had bowed before the Black king. ‘We of the black race are now free.’ Haile Selassie was, he said, the Black Messiah. Events unfolded from this point in a way that becomes familiar as Subin’s ...”

“... to do that sort of thing in the music halls.)Gradually, it emerges that Mr Benedictus worries, as we all do, about the way the weather is going, though he does not let it get him down. Today, he says, every journalist is a scientist and every scientist is a scaremonger. He warns against the practice of speaking airily about ‘the hottest day since ...’ or ...”

“... On the final turn-off a car full of teenagers gave one-fingered salutes, honking their horn until we were out of sight. One of the strengths of Nicholas Shakespeare’s In Tasmania is that he comes from an island far away. He can play the part of a baffled British visitor, asking awkward questions which land him right at the heart of the most sensitive ...”

“... Whether we agree with it or not, there was always a plausible argument for intervention in Iraq. The Prime Minister might, therefore, have fewer problems with public opinion in the future than he does now. The important political question to be asked is not whether his policy is right or wrong – that is a rather different ethical and moral question – but why a man usually so risk-averse was prepared to take so many risks with the unity of the Labour Party ...”

“... boy, can they be smart!’The Modest Interviewer: ‘Who are you talking to consistently – since we have some dire foreign policy issues percolating around the world right now – who are you consulting with consistently so that you’re ready on day one?’ Trump: ‘I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a ...”

“... he is difficult to docket in terms of the usual literary discussions of Victorian Poetry.’ We are given no example of the literary discussions allegedly ‘usual’. However, the author of Possession (Booker Prize 1990) speaks on these matters with authority, being herself a Victorian poet, industrious and prolific: These things are there. The garden ...”

“... The first people on this continent reached its southernmost point, the south-western tip of what we now call Tasmania, forty thousand years ago. In their creation myths, ancestral spirits breathed life into the land, a life that was celebrated in stories, songs, sand sculpture, ochre paint. Every rock, river, mountain, hill, camp, track and ritual spot on ...”