“... of Gandhiji’s action … And then a strange thing happened to me. I had quite an emotional crisis, and at the end of it I felt calmer and the future seemed not so dark. Bapu had a curious knack of doing the right thing at the psychological moment, and it might be that his action – impossible as it was to justify from my point of view – would lead ...”

“... in illegality and shame she was making a claim on public discourse. She was active in the campaign group Choisir – but it seems to me ironic that she was standing up for a woman’s right to choose, because everything about Les Armoires vides suggests that Denise can’t and doesn’t make choices. Her life is determined by her milieu. ‘I can’t separate ...”

“... set loose a wave of corruption and criminality; stumbled chaotically from one political crisis to another; presided over an unprecedented decline in living standards and collapse of life expectancy; humiliated the country by obeisance to foreign powers; destroyed the currency and ended in bankruptcy. By 1998, according to official statistics, GDP ...”

“... to watch the new MPs take the night mail to London. James Maxton, the most charismatic of the group, assured the crowd that ‘they would see the atmosphere of the Clyde getting the better of the House of Commons.’ Maxton and his colleagues were members of the Independent Labour Party (until 1918 you couldn’t join the Labour Party directly, only an ...”

“... only by the intervention of rival foreign capitals – London, Paris, Vienna, in one memorable crisis even St Petersburg – at the expense of each other. But though external pressures, ever more ominous as the technological gap between Ottoman and European empires widened, might in principle have continued to neutralise each other long enough to allow for ...”

“... behest of the Australian Taxation Office. Wright, a computer scientist and businessman, headed a group of companies associated with cryptocurrency and online security. As one set of agents scoured his kitchen cupboards and emptied out his garage, another entered his main company headquarters at 32 Delhi Road in North Ryde. They were looking for ‘originals ...”

“... power that comes with landed wealth and bonds of marriage and mateyness within an exclusive social group, lies over north Norfolk. Eleven miles to the north of Agnew’s house is Holkham Hall, where Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, still owns farmland on the scale of his eponymous Georgian ancestor, the agricultural reformer Coke of Norfolk. Last year the ...”