“... surplus higher even than the figure the IMF had demanded. For citizens, prices and unemployment rose as growth fell by 50 per cent. But what was bitter medicine for militants was nectar to bond-holders: the spectre of default was banished. Growth resumed in 2004 as exports recovered. Even so the public debt continued to rise, and interest rates were hoisted ...”

“... to 1859, to crush Chechen resistance. When tsarism collapsed in the First World War, the Chechens rose up for their independence, and when the Second World War came, Stalin deported them en masse to Central Asia, where one out of every three died. Against this background, there was no chance that Chechens would submit to the Russian Federation that Yeltsin ...”

“... together with ‘Why should we buy Chinese steel, we’ve got our own?’ Sparring, our voices rose. Partly I still felt raw after the referendum result. But partly my discomfort was towards the institution I was defending, because I couldn’t disagree that, in this case, the EU had let the people of Keynsham down badly. ‘How many billion pounds did it ...”

“... time in its history. For it to fissure at the moment of withdrawal would be to put a question-mark over what all right-thinking patriots, not least such products of an imperial education as Attlee, must regard with pride as the most remarkable creative achievement of their empire. If Britain had to leave India, India should be as Britain had forged ...”

“... of her as Graham’s wife was still expected of her. The la-di-da voice had to be kept up to the mark. The drinking needed a bit of discipline even if the parties never stopped. The returns, on the other hand, were fewer. There was nothing like the same degree of ease. Colin’s cars broke down, his plans were erratic and in London his parents were too close ...”

“... for tens of thousands of people.’Other female obsessives work in austere isolation. The late Rose E.B. Coombs MBE, former Special Collections Officer at the Imperial War Museum, is the author of Before Endeavours Fade: A Guide to the Battlefields of the First World War (1976 and 1994). Miss Coombs’s bleak volume, illustrated with her own amateur ...”

“... unpronounceable beginning with a hiss and the name of Sylvester was conferred on him. His wife was Rose Waxman, a sister of two leading Yiddish actors, Maurice and Fanny Waxman, whose roles on the London and New York stages included Hamlet and Medea. My father was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Darlington, and always had a slight Northern accent. He ...”

“... the young Napolitano opted for the coming force of communism. Joining the PCI in late 1945, he rose rapidly through its ranks, reaching the Central Committee in just over a decade. When Russian troops and tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolt in 1956, he applauded. ‘The Soviet intervention has made a decisive contribution, not only to preventing Hungary ...”