“... story.’ Postcolonialism has left its mark: Pericles’ rival Cleon, they pointed out, ‘may have been right to say that democracy could not rule an empire’. Most strikingly, the gold-embossed representation of Pericles disappeared from the cover, and this is unlikely to have been done solely as an economic measure. The new Cambridge Companion to ...”

“... foreign espionage that is at present taking place within this country and the danger to which it may expose us’. The subcommittee was rapidly persuaded of the spy menace, and on its recommendation the Secret Service Bureau, the forerunner of both MI5 (the Security Service) and MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), was established in October ...”

“... of ‘Dutch Graves in Bucks County’, a poem that Wallace Stevens published in 1943. The image may have come from a march-of-time documentary of Americans training to fight in the Second World War. Probably the machines included tanks and a lorry convoy, possibly a squadron of fighter planes. What became of the angry men when the war was over? I grew up in ...”

“... about the play’s opening stage direction, ‘The Scene India’, and its hint that Fletcher may have been fascinated not by Islam so much as a highly theatricalised notion of India. For early modern Europeans, India was less a nation or even a vast swathe of territory than an idea. It was a cornucopia of riches – ‘th’Indias of spice and ...”

“... Kurdish minority. Erdoğan is said to have wanted Turkey to intervene militarily in Syria since May last year, but until now he has been restrained by his army commanders. They argued that Turkey would be entering a highly complicated war in which it would be opposed by the US, Russia, Iran, the Syrian army, the PYD and IS while its only allies would be ...”

“... that there was enough evidence to prove her a witch several times over. A hearing took place in May 1618, and a commission was set up later that summer. But the wheels of justice turned slowly. Proceedings began in Leonberg town hall on 9 November 1619. Reinbold’s kinsmen repeated their suspicions, further alleging that Katharina had driven her husband ...”

“... as Williams persists in calling it (‘master’ might be more appropriate), had surrendered in May 1940. One might have thought the surrender applied to its colonial possessions too. That’s certainly what King Leopold III – a true chip off his old great-uncle’s block – seems to have accepted when he ordered the governor-general of the Congo, Pierre ...”

“... from whose etceteras no traveller ever whatnotted, and your particular crimes are remembered. This may well be the reason why writing that gets inside death (Hamlet, the Iliad) has on the whole mattered more to people than writing about life or parties. Death tells us more about what we are: a universal nothing but also very painfully a particular ...”

“... appalling conditions of travel, bug-ridden hotels and half-sold halls. In a single year, from May 1840, he made no fewer than four visits to the British Isles, and for the second and third of them was offered the enormous fee of 37,000 francs to play more than eighty concerts, over a distance (Hilmes reckons) of some 3500 miles, taking in the north of ...”

“... wants to say now, and because one believes there is no other way of getting a hearing. Pamphlets may turn on points of ethics or theology, but they always have a clear political implication.’ For historians, this immediacy is the problem, with the added challenge that for the years between 1570 and 1600 pamphlets came not just singly or in short exchanges ...”

“... Sex has become so common that it’s boring, the act itself almost beside the point, which may be a reason young people are reported to be having less of it. Obviously, sex doesn’t happen in a vacuum (that might be interesting); it’s often a way to discuss gender and power. That point, too, is a little tired, worn out from overuse, but it persists ...”

“... that suggested poison. Joseph Boehm, who designed the commemorative coins for the 1887 Jubilee, may – but then again may not – have died in flagrante with Queen Victoria’s ‘bohemian’ daughter Princess Louise. Politicians used smart dress to cover poor morals: Joseph Chamberlain sported a monocle and an orchid ...”

“... retaliate, and perhaps easing tensions, the meaning of forgiveness here is hard to grasp. While it may involve notions of right and wrong, it doesn’t signify condoning, or justifying, or pardoning, or reconciling with someone who has wronged. As the Molotschna women point out, forgiveness cannot be coerced: ‘Isn’t the lie of pretending to forgive with ...”

“... Patrol’s investigation of Anna, Lime’s former girlfriend, a Hungarian who has fake papers and may be deported back to the Russian zone (in the film she is Czech, and played by the Italian Alida Valli). He says, ‘There is a lot of comedy in these situations if you are not directly concerned.’ A pretty bleak line, even if he does then show that he knows ...”

“... on the celebration of Russian nationality were weakening. A more dramatic change came in May 1945, when – for his toast at a victory banquet in the Kremlin – Stalin singled out ‘the Russian people’ as ‘the decisive force that ensured the historic victory’. In the conventional Western telling of Soviet history, this marked an important ...”