“... people in the village who struggle to keep up payments to the local borough for their new tract homes, Iglaq built his own. All summer he’s worked building a road to the freshwater ponds south-east of the village. His salary plus overtime will pay for massive stove-oil bills, boots, clothes, gas for the skiddoo and hunting gear. When the sea freezes in ...”

“... drowning in a tangle of sheets and hospital wires or raised up by pain into cruciform postures, arms outstretched’. She starts bleeding at 34 weeks, so the baby has to come out early by caesarean section. When Cusk’s daughter is born, she is colicky, won’t sleep, breastfeeds for an hour at a time. The biological imperative is a shock. So are the ...”

“... and more than a dozen other departments, as well as former ambassadors, generals in the Israeli army, chairs of political parties, a head of the semi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel, a former speaker of the Knesset, and a winner of the Israel Prize. The signatories included not just members of Israeli left factions but two dozen from centrist and ...”

“... desperate to increase the income from their land forced many thousands of small tenants from their homes by a mixture of bribery, threats and the torching of their thatch, their roof-timbers and their looms. Chrissie MacPherson, the landlady, was the daughter-in-law of the Coddy – Barra’s famous memorialist or seanchaidh, whose stories were edited into a ...”

“... International Crisis Group. (Following the intensification of the blockade in 2007, the Israeli army calculated that to avoid malnutrition each person in Gaza needed 2279 calories a day; the UN recommends a minimum of 2100 calories a day in emergency situations.) UNRWA and other groups had four hundred distribution centres throughout the strip; GHF has only ...”

“... my beer. After breakfasting in three different houses, the revellers found their way to their own homes about 3.30 in the afternoon, beginning by that time to be a little serious, and in my opinion ashamed of their ... drunken perambulation. Now let anyone call in reason to his assistance and seriously reflect on what I have before recited, and they must I ...”

“... under Tony Blair, was himself abandoned by his mother at the age of three and brought up in care homes until he was 11), but knowledge of them increases the reader’s admiration for Bevin’s lifelong generosity of spirit. This flourished as a consequence of Bevin’s precocious activities as a Baptist Sunday school teacher and later as a travelling local ...”

“... and major Cabinet reshuffles are compressed into a sentence or two. One of Churchill’s war aims was to preserve the British Empire, a theme reduced by Gilbert to the faintest of scribbles in the margin. On several occasions Churchill vetoed or sabotaged attempts to accelerate constitutional change in India, but none of them rates a mention. There is no ...”

“... speak to one of our employees about an incident that had recently occurred in one of these luxury homes. The employee was the caretaker for the property of an important person and lived here alone, sending money back to his family in Punjab. One day, towards the end of his shift, an internal door handle broke and the owner told him to fix it immediately. The ...”

“... if their rights were entirely free from constraint but they had to barricade themselves in their homes before giving thanks for these civil liberties? The problem is to strike a balance between the recognition that crime on estates of this kind is a serious problem and treating their residents as a mass of downtrodden proles who are entirely the victims of ...”

“... broke out across the region; the raid was led by Zaghawa commanders who had served in the Chadian army. Déby was trapped: although he wanted to remain on good terms with Bashir, he was unable to prevent his own people offering bases, men and arms to their kin in Darfur.Bashir grew increasingly distrustful of Déby and in ...”

“... of Jean McConville, taken in 1965, she stands beside a row of her children. She’s pregnant, her arms folded, hands hidden, wearing an apron. Her head is tilted, dark wavy hair pulled back and eyes scrunched up against the light. In the foreground, often cropped out, is her husband, Arthur. He is sitting down so you can’t see how tall he was. ‘They used ...”

“... all her life, lamenting the ‘smashers-up and pullers-down’ who destroyed the old order: ‘homes and estates ruined, property split up, slaves all gone’. Though foul-mouthed, strident and cruel, she also retained Southern conceptions of grace. To the end, she ate Virginia hams, steeped in honey and cloves. During the Second World War, Cliveden ...”

“... his work on popular memory and for History Workshop. John Merrick’s new selection of his essays aims to rectify that: it brings together a sample of Samuel’s historical studies, several of which are still thrilling to read, and most of which would have been difficult to get hold of without access to a good university library. All of them focus on the 19th ...”

“... to the socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics; 6. the goal of strengthening the army in the new era (including creating a world-class people’s army that obeys the party command); 7. the objective of fostering a new type of international relations and building a global community with a common destiny for ...”