“... letters? Well, he loved trees and the English countryside, and hated cars and machinery. He hated France and the French, although he did like Venice: ‘elvishly lovely’, he said. He loathed ‘that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler’, which will come as a relief to readers worried about the Nordic connection. And this is what he wrote to Stanley Unwin ...”

“... At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber. ‘Now that I have you to myself,’ said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, ‘I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet ...”

“... the parliament doors in November he was wearing a flak jacket under his coat, but it was a red rose, not an AK-47, that he flourished in front of him. Shevardnadze, tired and cynical but still wise, could have used gunmen to stop him but chose not to. All the same, the danger from Saakashvili’s other enemies is very far from over. He is going after the ...”

“... ninny – a little pussy catty, a little Red Riding Hood, I’ll wear a Bee in my Bonnet, and a Rose bud in my hair.’ It rankled that their father had thought Austin the writer among his children. In 1853, Dickinson scoffed at her brother’s attempts at verse-making: ‘Austin is a Poet, Austin writes a psalm. Out of the way, Pegasus … I’ll tell you ...”

“... inflicting a sobering defeat on the soldiers of the Prophet: naval bases remained in the South of France – at Nice and Marseille, for example – but, for now, Islam was largely confined to the Iberian peninsula. A century later, the Arabs took Sicily, but could only threaten the mainland. Palermo became a city of a hundred mosques; Rome remained ...”

“... credit since he took over in 2006 – the portfolio of the government’s development bank, BNDES, rose sevenfold after 2007. Offering preferential rates to leading companies that added up to a much larger subsidy than outlays to poor families, the ‘Bolsa Empresarial’ cost the treasury about double the Bolsa Família. Favourable to large commodity and ...”

“... by a mere trickle of other deaths. There were no executions in 1978 or 1980, one in 1981, the year France abandoned capital punishment. If not de jure, then de facto, the United States seemed to have abandoned this, the most ancient and most terrible of punishments. By the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s second term, in 1984, however, something seems to have ...”

“... writing to Douglas: ‘My Own Boy, Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music of song than for madness of kisses … I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.’ By March that year, Hyacinthus was making scenes: ‘Dearest of all Boys – Your ...”

“... complete with Fanny Haslam, set sail for Europe again, spending a year wandering in England, France, Switzerland and the Iberian Peninsula. Borges renewed friendships in Madrid. Williamson in his biography is ‘virtually certain’ that Borges met Lorca on this visit, but it is absolutely certain in any case that he read Lorca’s work and paid real ...”

“... in Europe. Furman’s concern was framed very differently. Why, he asked at the outset, had France known four revolutions since the 18th century, and some 15 constitutions, and the United States just one of each? Could religion have something to do with it? Bourgeois society in America, he argued, had from the beginning combined exceptional dynamism ...”

“... surplus higher even than the figure the IMF had demanded. For citizens, prices and unemployment rose as growth fell by 50 per cent. But what was bitter medicine for militants was nectar to bond-holders: the spectre of default was banished. Growth resumed in 2004 as exports recovered. Even so the public debt continued to rise, and interest rates were hoisted ...”

“... to a picturesque hike, or were ‘ruined’ by modern eyesores and industry. Large chunks of France and Italy were ruled out in this manner, whole countries dismissed. I haven’t fully shaken it, but one thing America will do is confound your sense of scale, and with it, your sense of the damage people can and cannot do. Passing, say, through one of the ...”

“... at first to distinguish from exhaustion: the MPLA keeled over as one blow followed another, then rose slowly to its feet, helped up by the Cubans and applauded by the Soviet Union. The dictatorship​ of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, which was arming and harbouring Unita and the FNLA, was a more serious threat than Alves. A few weeks before the coup, Neto ...”

“... unpronounceable beginning with a hiss and the name of Sylvester was conferred on him. His wife was Rose Waxman, a sister of two leading Yiddish actors, Maurice and Fanny Waxman, whose roles on the London and New York stages included Hamlet and Medea. My father was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Darlington, and always had a slight Northern accent. He ...”

“... morning boys! It’s Monday, 7.05. The BBC announces that the PLO has hijacked an Air France plane. Two hundred and forty-eight aboard, four hijackers armed to the teeth. A tricky situation indeed! I will see you all shortly in the washrooms.’ One morning he announced: ‘Good morning boys, the pope has died! He was found early this morning in ...”