“... believed the Arctic must be a hell, others believed it must be a heaven. Roger Bacon thought that north beyond a rim of ice at the Arctic Circle was a paradise where flourished the Hyperboreans: ‘a very happy race, which dies only from satiety of life, attaining which it casts itself from a lofty rock into the sea’. For many centuries the Arctic has been ...”

“... early 20th centuries, determined to halt Russia’s Inner Asian advance and ‘secure’ its own North Indian frontier, Britain fought three wars with the Afghans. It failed to subdue them but acquired substantial influence over Afghan foreign relations. Britain also sought to counter Russia by colonising oil-rich Iran, a far greater prize, but achieved only ...”

“... traditions: Southampton, Plymouth, Derby and Bolton, for example. They are a little weaker in the North but not much. The Tories did well in Wales, where they won 11 seats, taking two from Labour and one from the Lib Dems – part of a process by which Wales is becoming assimilated into English politics. And they made remarkable gains in former Lib Dem areas ...”

“... own terms. Otherwise, the bulk of the profession, oriented largely towards the West – Europe and North America – is only slightly less parochial than the society from which it is recruited. Unsurprisingly, historians seemed much better equipped during earlier moments of rapid flux and uncertainty – 1914, 1939, 1989-91 – to participate in public debate ...”

“... discussions of industrialism, or at least the place of her two Manchester novels, Mary Barton and North and South. Others remained more attached to the Knutsford Gaskell who wrote Cranford, Wives and Daughters and Cousin Phillis. Those tenderly detailed studies of provincial life, they argued, contained Gaskell’s best and wittiest voice. There was ...”

“... failed. Nothing substantive was achieved, while, as the British commander of Allied forces in the north, Edmund Ironside, noted at the time of the British withdrawal from North Russia in the autumn of 1919, the cost was to incur ‘the everlasting enmity of both sides – the Whites for deserting them, and the Reds for ...”

“... is the exact reverse of the Danish one, for, as Saxo Grammaticus wrote long since, history in the North began with two brothers, whose names were Dan and Angul. But that particular national myth is unknown in England. The point could be drawn out by considering the strange behaviour at rugby internationals (the introduction of ‘Land of Hope and ...”

“... unfavourable impression’.O’Connor’s ideas about her writing were unambiguous. In a letter to John Lynch, a reviewer and an academic at Notre Dame, in 1955, she says: ‘I feel that if I were not a Catholic, I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified.’ She described herself as a ‘hillbilly Thomist’: like ...”

“... for a hatchet, the Indians showed them a portage trail that led to a small rivulet, Bayou St John, that emptied into Lake Pontchartrain. The lake connected to the Gulf, and so would allow large ships to reach a city while avoiding the Mississippi altogether. The rivulet was surrounded by relatively high ground, and the area was close enough to the ...”

“... it is difficult to think of a single failed state in the region. The Americans like to describe North Korea as a rogue state, and Burma is certainly a nasty one, but in truth the nation-state in East Asia has been a huge success story: strong, inventive and dynamic. If you enlarge the frame to include South Asia, the picture may be less rosy but it is still ...”

“... reconstructed Eddystone lighthouse at Plymouth Hoe in Devon is indeed a monument to its designer, John Smeaton, arguably the first civil engineer in the modern sense, but it does not ‘host’ his remains. Smeaton was an eminently practical man who would have thought such an idea outlandish. When he died in 1792, he was respectably buried in his parish ...”

“... with a touch’) and they themselves were advertised: ‘To be SOLD. A Black Girl, the Property of John Bull, Eleven Years of Age, who is extremely handy, works at her Needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well. Enquire of Mrs Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement’s Church, the Strand.’ Huge, ornate images of negroes were displayed outside ...”

“... fleet-foot persona, ‘loping, running, retrieving’ through a landscape constructed out of North-East and Border landscapes and history. The persona of the Ranter was timely: he was a counter-historian, singing and reaving in tandem with academic projects like History Workshop, alert to the contribution of every ‘broadsheet printer, whisperer of ...”

“... will enable new writing, new politics, unblemished by Irishness, but securely Irish.’ Opening John Kelly and Eric Domville’s scrupulous and magnificent edition of Yeats’s letters, I readied myself to take a sling-shot at the great Cuchulain – the impulse dissolved in helpless love, chortles, delight. The old boy, I realised, has managed here his ...”

“... Some​ of M. John Harrison’s books have aliens in and carry endorsements from China Miéville; others are alien-free and endorsed by Robert Macfarlane. He has fans who’ve read all the science fiction but not Climbers (1989), his semi-autobiographical masterpiece about rock climbing in the North of England, and fans who are effusive about Climbers but won’t go near the sci-fi ...”