“... embarrassed, because they remained pro-Soviet till they died. When Jeremy Corbyn met them at a peace conference in Denmark in the early 1990s he asked what they thought of me. My father said, ‘We’re proud of him,’ which pleased me greatly. He had never said anything like that to me … In 1968, you started the ‘Black Dwarf’ – a newspaper that ...”

“... Europe and the Americas seemed to be there. We collected endless saintly smiles, hugs and V-peace signs, while up on the jerrybuilt stage Mick and Keith set loose clouds of yellow butterflies. By dusk, we had gathered six petition signatures, $30 in US currency and £12 sterling and some coins. The Hyde Park fiasco broke Harry’s spirit; it didn’t do ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... In truth, attitudes varied as widely as do perceptions of all manner of human experience, in peace or in war. Uncle Aubrey was one of a large Catholic family, whose menfolk were all educated by Jesuits at Stonyhurst. When the war came he was 28, newly married and working in the City of London. He enlisted immediately, was commissioned into the East ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... has warned the PYD that the Kurds’ future status in Syria should be established by post-conflict peace negotiations between Damascus and the opposition and can’t be unilaterally imposed; in the new Syria that emerges, whatever it looks like, the PYD doubts that Kurdish identity and rights will be respected. In Iraq, the Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani seized ...”

“... ambivalent about children before she had them and their arrival did nothing to change her mind. David Nettleship John was ‘a comic little fellow’, she reported, ‘but he grumbles such a fearful lot. I think he would very much rather not have been created.’ As one pregnancy followed another she gave up painting and, since their income did not ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... few motor-cars, there were few people.’ (Cyril Connolly hadn’t yet got there.) And Elizabeth David herself couldn’t have found fault with the food. Her mother for the time being was calm, a pleasure to be with. ‘So there we sat Chez Schwob, my mother and I, sun-warmed, looking at the sea and tossing boats, drinking a modest apéritif ...’ It’s ...”

“... by the phrase ‘stage army of the good’. A moon-faced vicar or two, talking about giving peace a chance. A self-satisfied Labour councillor wearing a CND badge. John Berger, the star guest, putting his usual spin on the dishonest line of the Communist Party. No doubt there was a resolution to send a telegram to Downing Street. There was also, I dare ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”