“... possibility that some riots may be modelled on the carnival or Saturnalia, that they may be fun. David Matza claimed some years ago, in his book Delinquency and Drift, that criminologists have taken delinquency rather too seriously, casting it as the fateful pursuit of those intent on profit or a grim lawlessness. He claimed that since Frederick Thrasher ...”

“... bed fell’ and ‘The day the dam broke’. No such distressing excitements have disturbed the peace of Lake Wobegon since the New Albion College made its exit, pursued by a bear, in the late 1850s. Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country portrays a strictly contemporary America in which the characters spend much of their time playing video games, watching TV ...”

“... believe, that it is the axis of power, of history; to go from East to West means to go from war to peace, from Communism to Capitalism, from old to new, from sentiment to hygiene; it is the route of the Jews, of political and other refugees. One has only to think of the many passages in Roth that describe the sad songs of fugitives and emigrants as they huddle ...”

“... are equally visible to all of us. On my one visit to Israel, I was taken by some Israeli friends, peace-loving and generous in their attitudes, to the far north and shown the hole in the barbed wire, known as the Friendly Gate, through which, I was told with pride, Israeli doctors passed daily to work in poor Arab villages. It was at least a start, they said ...”

“... to SIS, or both. But The Climate of Treason is not one of these hagiograms. They really talked: David Footman, Nicholas Elliott, Sir Robert Mackenzie, George Carey-Foster, Sir Frederick Warner, agents and diplomats on the security side, and a large anonymous group of Intelligence men from both branches of the service, retired and active. The reason can be ...”

“... and sexual excess, as Richard Cobden put it – the Arabs were often admired for manly simplicity. David Urquhart, secretary at the embassy in Constantinople, wrote that Islam was not a false religion to be ridiculed: it taught no new dogmas, propounded no fanciful revelation and imposed no new priesthood; on the contrary, he argued in The Spirit of the East ...”

“... volumes had included many sentimental or chirpy verses, they had also contained ‘Goliath and David’, a rewriting of the story in Goliath’s favour which anticipates Graves’s many debunkings of history, from My Head, My Head! (1925) to King Jesus (1946), of which Goodbye to All That is one. In the ‘Familiar Letter to Siegfried Sassoon’, written ...”

“... did he seek to build bridges after winning the presidency. In an interview at the US Institute of Peace on his first trip abroad after the election, he remarked: ‘I hope you have a copy of the election results. The constituents, for example, who gave me 97 per cent [of the vote] cannot in all honesty be treated on [a par] with constituencies that gave me 5 ...”

“... as well as to their original classical setting. The figures wait – for the doctor, for food, for peace. A columnar tree cuts across ashlar. Greys tending to lilac, mauve and olive green set off the plain white bowls of the orphans and the clean bandages of the wounded. The glowing oil lamp in the foreground and the sash window illuminated in the sober ...”

“... dat animum (‘It is the holy love of the fatherland which moves us’). Half a century ago, Dom David Knowles, doyen of humane medievalism, hailed the MGH among the ‘great historical enterprises’, which it certainly was (and is) despite its original nationalist agenda. Medievalist Wissenschaft (the term has scientific connotations largely absent from ...”

“... convicted and harshly punished, usually on grounds of incitement to riot or disturbing the peace. Throughout the spring and summer of 1961, hundreds of them – ranging from prominent white ministers from the North to black high-school students from Nashville, Tennessee – descended on North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas. But they ...”

“... was placed on the Munich Arch: ‘Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, a warning for peace.’ There’s an illuminating chapter on the Hall of Heroes, the Valhalla Monument built by Leo von Klenze at the behest of Ludwig I of Bavaria on a hill overlooking the Danube (it’s also the subject of a painting by Turner, who was present at its opening ...”

“... supporting British liberty and strength. Now English people who notice it wonder what it was for. David Cameron says he will fight to prevent the break-up of Britain ‘with every single fibre’. But why? When Salmond rang him up after the election and read out a shopping list of demands, Cameron seems to have been oddly silent. Many London commentators made ...”

“... jihadi movement has won power it has lost popularity by failing to give the people what they want: peace, security and jobs. In Afghanistan, for instance, the Taliban had considerable public support when it came to power in 1996 after years of civil war: many Afghans were glad of the stability the Taliban offered. But Mullah Omar’s administration was so ...”

“... your husband between you have ruined my literary work.’ After that I went to bed. Flooded with peace, I fell asleep. A related Spark speciality – introducing a character as a pretext for a sequence of deadly pounces – is frequently deployed in an unsisterly manner. Take The Girls of Slender Means (1963): Dorothy’s hips were 36 and a half ...”