“... By spring 1940 France and Britain had been at war with Germany for more than six months; Belgium was already occupied by the Nazis. On 9 June some fifty divisions Of the German Army under von Rundstedt, a commander so formidable that even Hitler is said to have treated him with considerable respect, struck southwards from Belgium towards Rheims ...”

“... suit and cap. Lenton was one of many suffragette fugitives who remained in hiding until the war brought them amnesty. Like their feminist forebears, suffrage historians have tended to take sides, for or against militancy. Jill Liddington’s influential first book, One Hand Tied behind Us, written with Jill Norris, and published in 1978, offered a ...”

“... Piketty dwells particularly on the intrusion of warfare: ‘To a large extent, it was the chaos of war, with its attendant economic and political shocks, that reduced inequality in the 20th century.’ His book is also something of a throwback in its mode of address. A clear and sometimes sarcastically witty writer (noting that the parents of Harvard students ...”

“... Last year a BBC documentary about the war in Bosnia showed the town of Travnik besieged by Bosnian Serbs. Conditions in the town were dismal; hunger and fortitude were the order of the day. The programme was watched by 1.8 million viewers, none more attentive than a Mrs Willis of Bath, who wrote to the broadcasters complaining about the amount of smoking in the programme ...”

“... and balderdash’: look at America, the beleaguered Sage of Chelsea argued, and its absurd Civil War, prompted by what he derisively called ‘the Nigger Question’: Essentially the Nigger Question was one of the smallest; and in itself did not much concern mankind in the present time of struggles and hurries. One always rather likes the Nigger; evidently ...”

“... Like many other political scientists and historians, they refer back to the ‘post-war consensus’, an era in which, supposedly, Conservatives of the One Nation school were at one with Labour in upholding a social democratic settlement. This view is now vigorously disputed by critics, who claim that British politics were always polarised ...”

“... cookbook point out that there is no way of knowing exactly what was on the menu at the super-first class A la Carte restaurant on the evening of 14 April 1912, because ‘unfortunately, none of the surviving passengers who ate there on the last evening tucked a copy of the menu into the pocket of a dinner-jacket, so we can only surmise what the bill of fare ...”

“... chronicles of his wasted time in the farce of paying agents in Lorenço Marques during the war? Perhaps Cyril Connolly said the last word on the spy story when in ‘Bond strikes camp’ he pictured 007 being nearly seduced by a C monstrously attired in drag. The spy story continues to flourish, but no longer do upper-...”

“... in another respect as well, since Finley appears to emphasise ‘status’ at the expense of ‘class’ in the analysis of social structure and social conflict. In the ancient city, ‘what we commonly call “class conflict” is invariably between “rich” and “poor”, not between landowners and manufacturers, or ...”

“... Among the welter of images and mythologies that constitute the middle-class Bengali’s consciousness – P3 and Ganesh underwear, the Communist hammer and sickle, Lenin’s face, fish and vegetable chops outside the Academy, wedding and funeral invitation cards, the films of Satyajit Ray, the loud horns of speeding state transport buses, Murshidabadi and Tangail sarees, the daily Ananda Bazar Patrika, the songs of Tagore, the destitute outside Grand Hotel, Boroline Antiseptic cream, Madhyamik school examinations (to name just a few of the constituents) – Mother Teresa, too, is present ...”

“... the Blue Division, a unit of volunteers who served with the Nazis during the Second World War. In Andalusía there is a roadside restaurant called Casa Pepe, stacked from floor to ceiling with Francoist and Falangist flags, pictures and other memorabilia – it even stocks olive oil and cava in bottles stamped with Franco’s image. Reíllo, a village ...”

“... age and its ‘engineers’, and the (decline of the) culture of modernism and its ‘new class’. (Some of the 17 essays are about socio-political analysis, but they are less strikingly original.) It is worth noting that the twenty years straddle what may well be one of the most significant periods of change in modern times: the évènements de ...”

“... Rivers. The audience was composed almost entirely of people like me and my friends: white middle-class liberals and radicals, many of whom were veteran civil rights activists. We had trooped into the Vanguard expecting to make common cause with the speakers, but Jones did not look kindly on us. In fact, he quickly told us we weren’t wanted in the civil ...”

“... all the most interesting Italians – and certainly the funniest – came from the South. An upper class looking ‘west’ in a countryside that looked ‘east’ had much to sharpen its sense of irony. Roberta Thompson Manning’s book concerns the Russian gentry in the last two decades or so of Tsarist Russia. It is a very large and dense book, with a list ...”

“... In China the Opium War is taken to mark the beginning of the country’s modern history, seen as one of continuous national humiliation under the heel of Western imperialism, bravely but hopelessly resisted by the peasantry, until Chairman Mao came along. It takes pride of place in school history courses; monuments, museums, books, films and TV documentaries are devoted to it; and there is even a computer game in which you can play at bashing the British at Canton ...”