“... Between 1896 and 1907, the Oxford Egyptologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt spent six seasons digging the low, sandy mounds surrounding the village of el-Behnesa, a hundred miles south of Cairo and ten miles west of the Nile. In concentrating on the ancient town of Oxyrhynchos (literally, ‘city of the sharp-nosed fish’), they were not aiming to uncover another set of impressive ruins that could rival those of Leptis Magna, Ephesus or Pompeii ...”

“... ejected Grau and, in a display of neighbourliness, FDR renounced the Platt Amendment. This made little difference. A new treaty reaffirmed the lease on GTMO, and, again, there was no date given for it to end. The treaty continues to provide the moral and legal justification for America’s occupation of Cuban territory. The most interesting aspect of the ...”

“... not really explain. It comes as a surprise to Anglo-Saxons, reading the Kama Sutra, to find so little jokiness, so much order and philosophy, put into sexual manners; and something of the same kind is true with table manners. Here, according to Japanese teaching, are the seven kinds of bad manners with chopsticks: neburi-bashi, or licking chopsticks with ...”

“... stressed the superiority of Ideal Love to passion) and the household life with his ‘darling little wifey’ and her mother to which Poe clung in the extremes of poverty. His comic-pathetic pursuit of other women after Virginia’s death was carried out partly in an attempt to replicate the family household (he took it for granted that Virginia’s ...”

“... deeply grateful to her for looking after him and gently restraining him from drinking more than a little too much. They were walking just off Lexham Gardens with his sister when he was struck by a car driven fast round the corner by the sort of young man who frequented his own style of Kensington saloon bar. Injuries were severe, and though he got over them ...”

“... The message he intended to convey was that Mrs Thatcher’s government was displaying too little compassion in its treatment of the miners. It was a message that nine historians out of ten would have been only too happy to deliver. But how could Winston Churchill, with his controversial record in the General Strike, possibly be enlisted on the side of ...”

“... by the Sackvilles, was, in fact, a marriage of social equals. Nicolson was the younger son of Sir Arthur, 11th Baronet, later created a peer for his services in the Foreign Office as Permanent Under-Secretary 1910-16. Harold’s Hamilton grandmother owned a stately home in Co. Dublin. His uncle by marriage was the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, Viceroy of ...”

“... 14 May 1752: ‘In his own time Timothy Dwight was a figure of towering significance.’ Arthur Murphy, born in Clomquin, Roscommon, 27 December 1727: his comedy The Upholsterer was produced in 1758, Alzuma in 1773. And while we are on the drama, let us remember James Robinson Planché, born in Piccadilly, London on 27 February 1796, who is part of ...”

“... Gerald Feinberg, a physics professor at Columbia and a great science fiction fan, recommended Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke was not very well-known then, but I set about reading everything he had written and found that I liked it a great deal. I wrote an enthusiastic article, and soon after it appeared I got a note from Clarke saying he was coming to New York ...”

“... encouraging the precocious flight of her ‘eaglets’.Richard I succeeded his father but spent little time in England. Though he was praised for his courage on the Third Crusade (1189-92), he was captured on the way home by the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, and held for a ransom of 150,000 marks – around $3 billion in today’s money, according to one ...”

“... there after demobilisation, in 1919, to resume his part in a quartet of friendship with Howells, Arthur Benjamin and Arthur Bliss. His siblings had also to contend with his burgeoning fame, which they did not understand: two published volumes of poetry (1917 and 1919); much performance and publication of music ...”

“... The Frenchman recalled a letter they’d composed after a consultation with the accountancy firm Arthur Andersen. ‘Could you tell Mr Arthur Andersen …’ it began. Andersen, the firm’s founder, had died in 1947. ‘They didn’t have a clue,’ the Frenchman said. They got a clue pretty quickly, however, and homed in ...”

“... it has most reason to fear that past. There are no doubt many cities in this condition – with a little insight and a dose of malice each of us could draw up impressive lists. But everyone’s list would surely include Vienna. All the same, it might be objected, Vienna can hardly be said to be discovering its past. Surely no city in Europe has put its ...”

“... serious Classical scholar has to read a great deal of German: but Housman seems to have read very little German literature for pleasure. One wonders if he ever tried Nietzsche, who might have interested him greatly. He had an affinity with Kipling. One of the most interesting things Mr Graves tells is that, in the text of ‘Heriot’s Ford’ in his copy of ...”

“... had no need for violence. Here was a whole theory of beauty in a nutshell: but it is curious how little thought has been devoted to beauty since then, except as a rather anaemic branch of aesthetics. Unusual physical beauty, like unusual ugliness, is faintly scandalous: a product of chance rather than justice, it has typically been associated with ...”