“... yourself a lot of grief. Displacement activities abound, fuelled by the lingering fear that it may already be too late. What if you write the book and it’s no good, or at least not good enough to rescue your tattered reputation? What if by the time the book comes out the field has moved on? Before you can get going you need to bring your thinking up to ...”

“... under different designators, such as ‘Rakhine Muslims’ or ‘Chittagonian Muslims’. Some may well have arrived from Bangladesh after Burma’s independence in 1948, following a migratory route that long predated the drawing of hard borders and that has served both Buddhists and Muslims moving in either direction. But after Myanmar’s first ...”

“... the upheaval (already latent in the first hours of conflict) soon became glaringly apparent: in May, radical demonstrators were attempting to storm and overthrow the National Assembly created by the February Revolution in Paris, while in Vienna Austrian democrats protested against the slow pace of liberal reform and established a Committee of Public ...”

“... out with figments of the author’s imagination, not at all at Artemisia’s behest, though she may waive her objections. Banti asks and receives Artemisia’s permission to tell. She runs up against Artemisia’s reluctance to admit the author to her thoughts. The game of concealment is mutual: ‘We are playing a chasing game, Artemisia and I.’ At one ...”

“... singers, Cash clearly had some quality-control issues, but he also had a sense of humour; the one may indeed be the result of the other. The legendary album At Folsom Prison, for example, features him singing not only ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘Cocaine Blues’, but also the Jack Clement number ‘Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart’, which has ...”

“... 1942), banned from keeping pets (‘This is the death sentence for Muschel,’ their tomcat – May 1942), forbidden to provide for the teaching of Jewish children either privately or communally (July 1942), banned from purchase or possession of newspapers (July 1942), prohibited from purchase of eggs or vegetables (July 1942), prohibited from purchase of ...”

“... and located in the far east of Siberia, on the north bank of the Amur River. Established in May 1934, Birobidzhan was supposed to provide a shining alternative to Palestine, Yiddish-speaking and playing a positive part in the construction of socialism. Supported largely by fund-raising abroad – especially in New York – the dream project never ...”

“... months after Giraud arrived on Ile de France. As soon as he stepped off the boat from France in May 1777 Giraud was placed in chains and confined to prison. On 15 August, in the late afternoon, he and another prisoner, a young boy named Cézar, were digging a trench close to the island’s administrative headquarters. Giraud and Cézar were chained ...”

“... deeply troubled by his mother’s mysterious death, goes out of his way to find a little boy who may be able to tell him exactly what happened. When he asks the boy’s mother for permission to speak to the child, she looks at him ‘in a peculiar and criticising manner. To anybody but a half-blind man it would have said, “You want another of the knocks ...”

“... By my count, though I may have missed a few, this is the 25th volume of Ezra Pound’s highly distinctive correspondence to see the light of day. The first selection of his letters, edited by D.D. Paige and culled from the years 1907-41, was published in 1950, when Pound was four years into what would be a 12-year sojourn in St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, to which he’d been confined indefinitely after pleading insanity at his trial for treason in 1946 ...”

“... some of the purchase price. A 1964 biographer, Robert Christophe, speculated that Françoise may have had a child by Danton, and that he paid an inflated price to settle his obligations. He certainly drew on the dowry for his upcoming marriage to Gabrielle Charpentier, whose father was a tax official and the owner of a popular café near the law ...”

“... can take for a new technology to percolate down to the mass of the population: ‘vacuum cleaners may by 1955 have been in a majority of households, but washing machines were in only 18 per cent and refrigerators in a mere 8 per cent. In Wales, as late as 1960, there were fridges in just 5 per cent of households.’ He also makes the point that, after a ...”

“... maintained a discreet and sad silence. By a happy contrast, just a week earlier, Theresa May had underscored the government’s à la carte approach to human rights when she embraced other judgments of the European Court in deciding to intervene to stop the hacker Gary McKinnon being sent to the US, because to do so ‘would give rise to such a high ...”

“... whenever a society mutinies and decides to make a new world. I first saw it in the Sorbonne in May 1968, clinging to a landing-wall to avoid being sucked into the deafening vortex, the up-torrent waving despatches from the front line and the barricades, the downrush battling towards the street with rolls of posters and strung bundles of fresh ...”

“... was accepted mainly because it was so blindingly obvious to all save the most abject blimps. (They may have included some leading politicians – Churchill initially, and Ernest Bevin.) The disparity between Britain’s postwar situation and her colonial responsibilities was just too huge. Hyam spends some time debating which was the key factor: colonial ...”