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“... class system. It’s true that most militaries maintain a similar split, but in armies with a strong conscript tradition, mixing up demographics, it is nothing like as class-based. ‘Because we’ve always done it’ isn’t a great justification either. ‘We’ve always had horses’ – until the tank came along. ‘We’ve always worn red ...”

“... Laboratory, the German refugee physicist H.G. Kuhn, summed him up perfectly: ‘Jackson’s strong feeling of independence had been enhanced during his upbringing by the sense of power that money gives, and even in his development as a physicist he was largely self-taught: he had never done any research under or with anyone and probably had hardly ever ...”

“... Are you a satisfied man?’ ‘I am certainly not that,’ replies Simon Schama. But he is the opposite of a revolutionary. Even when he complains, his criticisms are carefully padded, as though in boxing-gloves, so that they do not hurt. Perhaps these days no one can admit to being satisfied. On the other hand, he is the Mellon Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard and he has just published a work of fiction ...”

“... certainly not classical, but in many cases it doesn’t seem to belong to its own period either. Simon Swain’s achievement in Hellenism and Empire is to make inauthenticity the key to later Greek literature instead of its embarrassment. In the first half of the book he examines the relationship between language, identity and the past. He sees language as a ...”

“... 70 to 90 per cent of clothes are dyed black) because we have found ways to stain pale yarns in strong colours. During the last 150 years the whole spectrum has come to be cheaply available, as it has become possible to synthesise dyes which previously had to be extracted from plants and animals. Dyes are tricky. Unlike paint – pigment carried in ...”

“... effect, on all these fronts at once. I am particularly fond of ‘Deid Dugs’, a tale told by Simon, a chancer of such doe-eyed irresistibility and ruthless rapacity that he goes among his disgusted yet envious friends by the name of Sick Boy. At the beginning of this story, Simon is sitting at his window with an airgun ...”

“... but genuinely induces narcolepsy. You fade in and out of consciousness until he stops talking. Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem candidate in 2004, might this time have had a chance to be mayor of London, but I don’t think Paddick does. The funny thing is that while Labour is desperate not to lose the mayoral election – because it would be such a terrible ...”

“... its revenue, the company was vested in trustees. But the press as a whole had no such luck. As Simon Jenkins has reminded us, the great proprietors bought and sold their newspapers for power, prestige and, they hoped, money. The brothers Harmsworth launched the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror while Scott was wrestling with Home Rule for Ireland and the Boer ...”

“... In a recent radio programme, Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell, two of the most prominent of the New Generation poets, retraced the journey undertaken by Auden and MacNeice in Letters From Iceland – a sign of the renewed interest which younger poets are showing in the poetry of the Thirties. Although Yeats and Eliot were publishing some of their greatest poems during the Thirties, it was Auden who created the style which most of his contemporaries sought to imitate, and it is Auden, more than Yeats or Eliot, who is influencing younger poets today ...”

“... to escape would consist of those best-equipped to build up the state of Israel – the young, the strong, the rich. Secondly, believing the Nazi persecution was conclusive evidence that assimilation of Jews by Gentiles would never succeed, they campaigned to prevent Jews emigrating to any country other than Israel on the grounds that it would retard their ...”

“... a report on a virtually unknown world. Judged by internal evidence, Stefan Heym’s Collin makes a strong impression of authenticity. It has been hailed in West Germany as the best available picture of the DDR and its history. Yet Heym continues to live in East Berlin. His earlier works are still in print in the East, but he has been expelled from the ...”

“... boss, Tamsine the bouncy 15-year-old daughter, full to the brim with comprehensive leftiness, and Simon the limp student son, about to leave his teacher-training course to go and live in a quasi-religious community. Tamsine is an ardent supporter of the squatters and wades in with help and advice. Simon feels he ought to do ...”

“... everyone was sympathetic to forms of woe – especially to deformities. In Cruelty and Laughter, Simon Dickie mounts a compelling case against what he calls ‘the politeness-sensibility paradigm’, by resurrecting a jeering counter-discourse that revelled in human suffering and physical affliction. His point about the sentimental 18th century is partly a ...”

“... sort. A schoolboy called Andrew Price posts a defamatory statement about his hated father, Simon, on the website of Pagford Parish Council. Simon has put his name forward for election as a councillor, to replace the popular Barry Fairbrother, whose sudden death has created the ‘casual vacancy’ of the title. The ...”

“... emphasis on heavy industry which their book concentrates on. Scottish cities each developed a strong individual character: Edinburgh was and is the city of government and service, Aberdeen has its resilience, specialised trading areas and fisheries, Dundee had its concentration on low-grade textiles, while Glasgow was the industrial powerhouse and a ...”