“... majority of Black troops, however, remained confined to work as construction and transportation crews, stevedores, engineers and the like. Delmont also discusses the Black members of the Women’s Army Corps, some of whom served as nurses and as members of the much admired armed forces postal service. But many others, including college graduates and school ...”

“... Arena.* Disorientation is the defining characteristic of this riverside zone. I encountered camera crews searching for the Thames path and others in quest of that newly installed Boris wheeze, the cable car. An interrogator from German television challenged me. ‘What are those new tents?’ ‘Nothing now. They used to be the David Beckham Academy. He moved ...”

“... that wars were irregular, too, but ‘sure as hell there’s a war coming.’ He trained the crews for B-17s in New Mexico before being made commander of the 703rd squadron of B-24 Liberators. Based in Tibenham, Norfolk, with 20 planes under his command, he was cited for keeping his squadron together in dangerous missions over Germany with fewer losses ...”

“... to the ‘lineage history’ (vamshvāli) which is a strong tradition among Keralan Christians. In Robert Eric Frykenberg’s Christianity in India, vamshvālis are described as orally transmitted pedigrees which ‘claim hereditary authority within certain elite families, through which kattanars [pastors] and metrans [bishops] descended from one generation to ...”

“... His older twin, Jesse Garon, was stillborn. (There was ugly gossip later that the doctor, William Robert Hunt, might have had a drink; that he might have saved Jesse if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the surprise appearance of a second child. But the Presleys were satisfied with his work and Dr Hunt received his standard $15 payment from the county.) In ...”

“... him the first issue of the Black Mountain Review and introduced him to the work of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson.Opinion is divided about his appearance. ‘He thought of himself as ugly,’ a boyfriend from the early 1960s said. ‘But when you saw Andy naked, he looked ...”

“... empty mirrors in white-tiled washrooms where the taps leak coal dust. Location-promiscuous film crews exploit the creep of suspended animation, the unreachable lives, the loud emptiness of cellars and toilet stalls, for arty bits invoking Tarkovsky, for fashion shoots and music promos. It is only reasonable that tribes of squatters, sensitive to the spirit ...”

“... Gala bingo hall. Security service cameras registering dissidents outnumber the embedded television crews in their blast-resistant trucks. When, a few days later, I return to Stratford, the ‘rail hub’ due to receive the full blitz of post-Olympic regeneration, it seems that nobody has given them the good news. The Rex Cinema is defunct. The main road ...”

“... too, but the war made its way into the nervous system of her poems indirectly and mysteriously. Robert Lowell was a high-profile conscientious objector, writing to Roosevelt in September 1943 with a ‘Declaration of Personal Responsibility’ which objected to the mining of the Ruhr Dams and the bombing of Hamburg. He concluded: In 1941 we undertook a ...”

“... of the Guildford Four are a politically heterogeneous bunch: at one end, Cardinal Basil Hume, Robert Kee, Merlyn Rees, Lord Scarman and the late Lord Devlin; at the other, rhetoric-ridden, far-left Trotskyist groupings. And in between the world and its dog. The only thing on which all are agreed – some with more knowledge of the facts than others – is ...”

“... exposed his thin skin. For him, Manhattan has always been the opposite of what home was for Robert Frost, ‘the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ Wa-a-a-a-h!Winning the presidency was never a deep desire, more a branding scheme that spun out of control, but Trump has tried to turn his victory into a means to compel ...”

“... by the empires that encroached on their mountains and occupied their ports – enlisted into naval crews, or forced to convert – but in many ways they benefited from their borderland identity. They played off great powers against one another, leveraged strategic information for court influence, infiltrated imperial ranks and forged valuable mercantile ...”

“... downward thrust of Asian Communism’ detected by the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies). That Communism was somehow involved in the war was not news, but out of politeness I wrote ‘Munich?’ in my notebook. Already shopworn by 1966, the Munich analogy never dies. It puts Hitler on the other side. Attleboro produced impressive ...”

“... out. After the Soviets introduced advanced anti-aircraft missiles in the 1970s, the RAF trained crews to fly low to avoid enemy radar, while the USAF took a technological approach, more protective of its aircrew, which Britain couldn’t afford. In 1991, half a dozen RAF Tornados were shot down by Soviet technology in Iraq. In the Falklands War in 1982, the ...”

“... But only men can have it all, she wrote in her journal:My consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars – to be part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording – all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery … I want to talk to talk to everybody I can as deeply as ...”