“... Medieval Japan, Imperial China, feudal Poland, republican Venice, caliphal Islam, absolutist France, industrial Britain, revolutionary Mexico, Stalinist Russia, populist Argentina, social-democratic Sweden, racist South Africa – all these and many more parade across what astonishingly remains a compact, middle-sized book, each deftly and economically ...”

“... to get anything done in our cumbersome and bureaucratic democracy. They point enviously to France, where things seem to happen faster, though that isn’t always the case: the TGV goes to Nice, but not yet on a high-speed line, as a result of local protests. Jim Steer is HS2’s biggest fan. The former chief railway planner at the Strategic Rail ...”

“... life,’ she wrote in The Faces of Justice (1961), which compared judicial systems in England, France, Switzerland, West Germany and Austria. ‘It shapes, and expresses, a country’s modes of thought, its political concepts and realities, its conduct … It all hangs together whether people wish to acknowledge it or not.’Another great thing about legal ...”

“... on Horner’s first grave and another similar cross for his brother, who was also killed in France and is buried outside the east end of the church with a tombstone by Eric Gill. Gill did the memorial to Raymond Asquith, too, a lettered inscription that blends into the tower wall opposite the Horner tomb. Everywhere is palpably Edwardian and Arts and ...”

“... mounted, he was easily entrapped. The most persistent of the pretenders who plagued Henry was Peter Warbeck (baptised ‘Perkin’ by the regime to make him sound silly), who claimed to be Richard of York, the younger of the vanished princes. European rulers keen to destabilise England had promoted the claims of this plausible, glamorous young man, but by ...”

“... All flesh is grass, said Peter the Apostle. In the United States, a calf runs the range for less than a year before going to a crowded feed-lot. It is treated with hormones to promote weight gain. Both there and in Britain the beast is likely to be drenched with antibiotics to keep down diseases and to promote further weight gain ...”

“... only limited success did nothing to prevent ‘radio traitors’ everywhere being vilified: in France, Paul Ferdonnet and André Olbrecht, who recorded programmes in Stuttgart; in the States, ‘Tokyo Rose’, Mildred Gillars (‘Axis Sally’) and Ezra Pound, who was indicted for broadcasting from Italy; in Britain, John Amery and P.G. Wodehouse, who was ...”

“... of the last century against the Islamic world, or from the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 between France and Britain, which brought about the dissection of the Islamic world into fragments.’ Bin Laden is not fabricating Israeli oppression in the West Bank and Gaza or American interference in Islam’s political, cultural and financial life. He is one of the ...”

“... he did not want to marry a French or Dutch princess. He had found living in exile, bounced between France and the Netherlands, humiliating. Catherine was Catholic, of course, but Portugal’s ambassador, Francisco de Melo, reassured Charles that she was ‘totally without that meddling and activity’ of Henrietta Maria, and would not threaten the English ...”

“... and beyond. (In England this effort was spearheaded by Alfred Cobban, Baker’s PhD adviser; in France by François Furet, his future colleague at Chicago.) For theoretical inspiration they turned to the likes of Condorcet and the Abbé Sieyès, who tried to carve out democratic constitutions that put checks on both centralised power and the tyranny of ...”

“... of exile, a place where he could be a figure of swaggering talent and a marginal actor. Thus when Peter Hall saw MacGowran on stage in London in 1959 he knew immediately what MacGowran was made for on the English stage. He had, Hall decided, ‘the perfect qualities for a Shakespearean clown’ and he invited him to join the Royal Shakespeare Company to play ...”

“... barren-spirited fellow … a property’. From this stems a still familiar, theatrical sense. Peter Quince, preparing the rude mechanicals’ show in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, says: ‘I will draw a bill of properties.’ Maus does not entirely ignore theatrical properties. She makes the shrewd point that there is often a tight fit between subject and ...”

“... his house, Gad’s Hill, and his offices in London, between London and unidentified villages in France where Ternan lived with her mother, between home and lengthy, exhausting reading tours throughout the United Kingdom and the United States. His heart was failing, his swollen left foot was hurting, and he zigzagged between the highs of cheering audiences ...”

“... leaving her in imminent danger of being convicted of poisoning her worthless ex-lover. Lord Peter Wimsey, whimsically love-struck and coming to the rescue, confronts the real villain: Yes, well, about this arsenic. As you know, it’s not good for people in a general way, but there are some people – those tiresome peasants in Styria one hears so much ...”

“... tribus began to appear too, as did denials on the part of those accused of writing them, including Peter Arpe, who nevertheless admitted to having ‘held … in his hand’ De tribus. At some point between 1712 and 1716, a forged letter from Frederick II to Otto of Bavaria began to circulate, purporting to confirm the 13th-century origins of the (in fact ...”