“... Bless You ... Your Husband Rots In Hell’), the Duchess of York (‘Fergie Foals Again ... I Only Hope That Both Mother And Baby Die In Childbirth’), horoscopes, Vinny ‘Nutsgrabber’ Jones. Even the infamous ‘GOTCHA!’ is dusted down to celebrate the sinking of the poll tax flagship. However subversive their aims, however extreme their sentiments, the ...”

“... by 1854.’ It was generally believed that the Ottoman Empire was effete and doomed and could hope to survive only if it was reformed from top to bottom. As early as 1833, Tsar Nicholas I diagnosed Turkey to Metternich as ‘the sick man’ (he doesn’t seem to have added ‘of Europe’). And the idea of stirring the Muslims into action on behalf of ...”

“... Most of the refugees gathered in the Jungle, a ten-minute drive from the bronze statue of Charles de Gaulle and his wife on the place d’Armes in the centre of Calais, have fled countries where in recent years the French and British have dispatched troops or bombed from the air. Others have escaped from regimes armed by France and the UK. Afghans ...”

“... meeting of two scandalous public figures able to relax in company where neither has anything to hope for or fear from the other. Harriette wonders why he should have minded his bad notice in the Edinburgh Review: it was not as if he was a ‘stupid, prosing poet’ who might ‘feel his inferiority’. ‘And where did you ever see a stupid, prosing ...”

“... has been named after Ibn Battutah, two films about his travels are in production, and in 1994 Charles Beckingham published the final volume of the Rihlah’s full English translation, a project begun by Gibb 65 years earlier; I hope Mackintosh-Smith’s book encourages people to read ...”

“... his punch-card loom in 1804, which, thirty more years down the road of modernisation, inspired Charles Babbage in his Analytical Engine, the great predecessor of the contemporary computer. For the dying man, the player piano is a lost term between these last two machines, the vanishing mediator between industrial and digital ages: ‘the beginning of ...”

“... The easterly trades, blowing relentlessly throughout the year, and against which they had no hope of sailing with their makeshift rigs, lay between them and the South American coast. Pollard was for sailing to Tahiti, in the Society Islands, two thousand miles away and an easy sail of several weeks at most. But Chase and Joy voiced strong opposition to ...”

“... gives an additional transgressive thrill because it’s not in the OED, and so offers the hope that I might have made it up – though, alas, I discover that William Gibson, father of cyberpunk, used it to describe an addiction to technology. Ah well, my usage is etymologically purer because it preserves the sense of the Greek root -laliá, meaning ...”

“... have to others.’ Only when such connected and wide-angled histories were available, might one hope to ‘see all the order of time’. Spencer was writing to puff his translation of Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History, a work the French theologian had embarked on in the 1670s while employed as tutor to Louis XIV’s heir. Interest in world history ...”

“... a series of biographical poems about scientists, inventors, engineers; a fair number of them – Charles Fourier, for example, and Wilhelm Reich – were completely crazy, though crazy in interesting ways. Enzensberger’s verse does two things superbly. It captures the mental states of its subjects (which often means their desolation or unhappiness), and it ...”

“... before he could become its first president); and he cleverly used a public lecture to explain to Charles Clarke, Blunkett’s successor at the Home Office, what Clarke shouldn’t have needed to have explained to him, namely that judges are ‘bound to take no notice’ of the views of government ministers, and so shouldn’t be expected to have cosy chats ...”

“... they favoured market-proven painting and sculpture over more experimental and critical forms. Charles Saatchi, an early backer of Hirst, was alert not only to the new investment potential of contemporary art but also to the publicity value of its more notorious players. The art market fell dramatically in 1990, three years after the stock market crash of ...”

“... and Dorothy Detail. A staff assistant called her Janie O. Gene Kelly called her Brunhilda. Bob Hope called her J.B. – for Jut Butt. Jerry Lewis called her Sylvia, but James Garner called her Sylvia-honey. Rock Hudson called her Eunice and sometimes Maude; she called him Ernie. Her son called her Sis. The character actor Billy de Wolfe called her Clara ...”

“... calls on the answering machine. From my mother: ‘Sean! You’re a father! Hooray! Let’s hope he doesn’t have too many of our crazy genes.’ From my drawling Uncle Charles, in Houston: ‘Owen Taylor is a very masculine name. Very male.’ Then ‘Hi Sean. Or Mr Wilsey. This is Sid from the New York City ...”

“... and Sir William Parker, who himself thought he was a fraction past it at 73. Which left only Sir Charles Napier, a mere 67 but a hopeless alcoholic with a vile temper. The commander-in-chief was the 66-year-old Lord Raglan, who had lost an arm at Waterloo but had never commanded so much as a battalion in the field. He was selected partly because he could ...”