“... in 230 ad, Baekdu Mountain on the Chinese-North Korean border in 969 and Mount Rinjani, a hundred miles or so west of Tambora, in 1257. By comparison, Vesuvius in 79 ad, Krakatoa in 1883 and Pinatubo in 1991 had a vei of 6 (more than 10 km3); Mount St Helens in 1980 had a vei of 5 (more than 1 km3); Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 had a vei of 4 (more than 0.1 ...”

“... doesn’t tell us to), other, later figures who couldn’t walk in the air, and especially perhaps Richard Drew’s famous photograph, taken at 9.41 a.m. on 11 September 2001, showing a man dropping downwards head first, one leg bent at the knee, only the abstract vertical lines of a building behind him, a construction that in the photograph has neither top ...”

“... books and money-making films. In the past year, in an unremarkable American house not many miles away from where these words are written, the conjunction of silently moving pieces of furniture and a teenage girl with reputed occult powers attracted reporters, television crews, and a professional ghost-buster from another State. Parapsychology, the ...”

“... barely see,’ Richter writes, ‘the sails of nine Spanish ships anchored three miles or so off the coast.’ And then ‘we’ follow de Soto. But Richter is afraid to go where Walter has gone before: Richter only observes. He doesn’t interject himself into the action. He tells us that ‘we are not sure if this is the first time these ...”

“... little pain Edward – but the Queen has indeed overseen a drama of pride and pettiness that makes Richard II seem like an episode of Coronation Street. More than that, she has described a new role for the royals: making one feel a bit better about the dysfunctionality of one’s own family, knowing that they could never be so internationally fucked up as ...”

“... Wales is currently staging a large loan exhibition of the Welsh ‘father of English landscape’, Richard Wilson, curated by Martin Postle and Robin Simon. It is a magnificent show, the first on this scale for more than thirty years. It will be at Cardiff until 26 October, and it is accompanied by a sumptuous catalogue, the fullest, most faithfully reproduced ...”

“... the ruins of this little-known venture, even if he has overlooked the remaining reservoir five miles south-east of Salisbury at a thickly wooded place of knee-deep leafmeal and perpetual dusk called Pope’s Bottom. It is now a coarse fishery which abuts the estate of Clarendon Park. The omission of this great house from the first edition was ...”

“... readers of my (and his) generation will recall the final shot of This Sporting Life: Frank Machin (Richard Harris), mired, spavined, raising himself on the rugby field to lurch back into hopeless battle. His life as a professional is over. Football chews up its workforce faster even than the pits. But Arthur doesn’t take it lying down: no longer a sportsman ...”

“... unnaturally large, with their heads reaching nearly up to the ceiling, as the British sculptor Richard Deacon showed us in photographs of visitors to the labyrinth of tiny tunnels which run under the city of Chicago. The tunnel becomes claustrophobic, oppressive, odd. On the other hand, if the tunnel is very large, it becomes ...”

“... the one in Nottingham any Saturday night – a sign by the loos plaintively reads: MIAMI, 4378 MILES —>.) The ethnography of Hooters culture by ‘Richard Baldwin’ – one of the collaborators’ pseudonyms, actually the borrowed name of one of their friends, a 71-year-old former champion bodybuilder and emeritus ...”

“... books by writers such as Peter Davidson (The Idea of North), Nan Shepherd (The Living Mountain), Richard Jefferies (Nature near London), J.A. Baker (The Peregrine), Jacquetta Hawkes (A Land) and Roger Deakin (Waterlog). It’s interesting that all these were connoisseurs of nature rather than workers with it or in it. Macfarlane’s accounts of them have a ...”

“... and that ‘almost every character is real’ – his sole invention being their pursuer, Richard Nayler, mockingly saluted by James, duke of York, as ‘our regicide-hunter-in-chief’.The New England experiences of Whalley and Goffe are not unknown to historians; Christopher Pagliuco’s The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe ...”

“... effective capitulation of the Russians at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, more than a million square miles and 50 million people, together with most of Russia’s coal, iron and oil deposits and half its industry, were lost to Germany and its Turkish ally. A million German troops helped impose a ruthless military dictatorship in the occupied areas, which ...”

“... 27th Infantry Division 17 days to get from Redon to Avranches at an average speed of just seven miles a day. This is merely one example of the campaign’s many successes. Large numbers of volunteers joined the Resistance. It was never strong enough to confront the Germans directly, but the assistance it gave the Allies during the invasion in 1944 was a ...”

“... their home airfield when the undercarriage gave way on landing. When the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richard talks dismissively about ‘Brabazon bands’ he is alluding to an ill-fated post-war British airliner. A rock band can be beautiful to look at, sound as sleek and smooth as you like, the gnarled Richard is saying, but ...”