“... The voiceover narrative, written by Geoffrey Ward, is remorseless and untheatrical, just as Peter Coyote’s spoken narration is dry, unaccented and a little formal, as if reading out a casualty report. But Burns and Novick seem to understand how specious it would be to make this a tidy, organised report – a history – instead of attempting to ...”

“... Galleries, which included Man Ray’s dreamy Lovers, showing Lee Miller’s lips floating above green hills, Meret Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup and saucer and Eileen Agar’s objets trouvés – shells, nets and pieces of rusted metal. More than a thousand people went to the opening, at which the performance artist Sheila Legge wandered around carrying ...”

“... too much cynicism. No one anymore believes that all or even most of our policemen come from Dock Green. But we still see them differently from the way that Americans, for instance, view their police. Commander Dalgleish, like Inspectors Morse and Wexford, and DCI Jane Tenison are all mythical figures. Nonetheless, the fact that they chiefly use their brains ...”

“... left Cape Town for Australia. Agatha wrote to her mother advising her to buy Shepperton Packing Co Green Label ‘Fancy’ canned peaches. Then, following a short stay in New Zealand, the Christies left Belcher and the others and took a holiday in Hawaii. Rapturous first impressions were modified when Archie was badly blistered by the sun and Agatha got severe ...”

“... to a list released by the revolutionaries in 1979, included Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings and Mrs Arthur Sulzberger. Emboldened by this support, the previously timid shah manifested signs of the syndrome al-Afghani had identified in one of his predecessors: ‘However bizarre it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact, that after each visit ...”

“... extent of supporting ‘moderately repressive regimes’ if they happen to be allies. Accordingly, Peter Stuart reported in the Christian Science Monitor of 29 January that Congressional hearings were likely to be scheduled on the ‘terms of the hostage release agreement...treatment of the hostages...embassy security’ and – as a kind of afterthought ...”

“... He set up the Filey Underwater Research Unit with his sons and a few friends, including Tony Green, who later went on to help found Filey Bay 1779. They took archaeology courses and made research dives from Adams’s boat. ‘It’s such a dynamic bay – the sand is always shifting,’ he told me. ‘And the depth [at which the wreck lies] depends on ...”

“... of Jiyeh and Damour just south of Beirut. The country was splintering into sectarian cantons. A ‘green line’ cut Beirut in half along Place des Martyrs, the vast plaza in the centre of the downtown area. Rival warriors, often drugged, barricaded themselves on either side, shooting and shelling one another, and the inhabited quarters behind them, at ...”

“... Paul Foot, now its politics are rightish, its stance prurient, and its key figures Nigel Dempster, Peter McKay and Auberon Waugh. The radical lampoon has become required reading on the magazine syllabus of every Sloane Ranger. Moreover, the Eye, that fearless exposer of the faintest mafia, now runs a comfortable little establishment of its own. Consider how ...”

“... beautiful cover illustration for The Wise Wound, the study of menstruation by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove (translated into German in 1980), shows the Grail chalice within a womb. In Syberberg’s film Amfortas’s wound is both internal and external, as in dream-logic: his tunic is bloodied at groin-level, but the wound is also carried about on a ...”

“... his bleeding face, and if we are as severe as these editors, and if we want to keep that moment (Peter Brook, for example, didn’t), we have really to accept a version of the play that lacks over a hundred lines found only in the Folio. The General Introduction ably defends these editorial principles, and along the way gives a very lucid and engaging ...”

“... scarlet raincoat to show her naked body decorated with tomato cans on her breasts, fastened with green string, and a small birdcage containing a live canary as a necklace. Elsa died in Paris, from the gas fumes of an oven – it’s not clear whether or not she committed suicide. Years later, Barnes tried to retrieve her death mask in order to use it as an ...”

“... of Ecstasy, a juvenile descendant of the Winged Victory, also closely related to Loie Fuller and Peter Pan, first perched upon the bonnet of a Rolls-Royce. By the Thirties architecture had begun to envy the sleek and aggressive forms employed in modern cars and ocean liners especially. We can see this from the spectacular perspectives hanging on the stairs ...”

“... lookout for the Evil One, who roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5.8). We were looking for ‘decisions’ for Christ, or rededications at the very least. We preached the good news. We believed that Jesus meant it when he said I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me (John 14.6). We ...”

“... was about as Spanish as a boil-in-the-bag paella. She was baptised Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert at St Peter’s Church in Liverpool on 16 February 1823, though she was probably born two years earlier in County Sligo. Her father, Edward Gilbert, was a soldier. Her mother, Elizabeth Oliver, was the product of an illegitimate union between Charles Silver Oliver, an ...”