“... early modern period. The Night Battles and The Cheese and the Worms, each a case-study from the north-east corner of Italy, were followed by a synthesis of Eurasian sweep in Ecstasies. The work that has appeared since is no less challenging, but there has been a significant alteration of its forms, and many of its themes. The books of the first twenty years ...”

“... Britain and France as gangsters. What I remember were the things that made us laugh: the column by Paul Jennings that had a tongue-twister about ‘tuskless rustics eating crustless Ruskets’; the strip cartoon by Jules Feiffer; the witty reviews by Kenneth Tynan of plays that we had next to no chance of seeing; the house adverts by the subversive estate ...”

“... a baby was born to a woman who had received a uterus from a deceased donor, a feat repeated in North America last June, giving reproductive hope to trans women who want to carry children of their own. So far, at least, it seems that a womb is still necessary to bring a baby into being, though researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have ...”

“... but, after all, sudden conversions occur. ‘Personally, I would have had the watchers out on St Paul for a long time if I had been in charge of the Christian secret service when he came blundering into Damascus yelling that he’d gone blind, and Christ was the Messiah.’ Railton does his work only too well and on the last page we see one of his younger ...”

“... speeches and an emotional television series called Insurrection, broadcast nightly. But once the North broke and the IRA campaign recommenced, the state’s attitude changed. ‘In an act of astonishing political opportunism,’ O’Loughlin wrote, ‘1916 was revised. By 1976, and the 60th celebrations, a different tune was being played. For people of my ...”

“... Klansmen and neo-Nazis – most of them veterans – drove to the site of a march in Greensboro, North Carolina, where members of the Communist Workers’ Party were protesting against the Klan’s attempt to sabotage their organising of black textile workers. Five of the protesters were killed in a shoot-out; 12 were wounded. The trial that followed ...”

“... CPA fostered.* When the auditors first commented on the CPA’s lack of accountability, its boss, Paul Bremer, bullishly replied that their report ‘does not meet the standards Americans have come to expect of the inspector general’. In his just published memoirs, Bremer dwells on infighting within George Bush’s cabinet and his claim that he tried and ...”

“... the Acts of the Apostles has little to say about any of them except Peter; its main protagonist is Paul, an early apostle but not one of the ‘twelve’). The earliest written source on the subject is to be found in the Apocrypha. This is a class of writings which may not seem the best source for documentary data, though to call an early writing ...”

“... and it is also the place in which regionalism is suddenly activated as a term: the presumably north-west regionalism of Carver Country, marked by subalternity and economic marginality, is confronted with the transcendental regionalism of a now truly universal South (indeed, a fascinating part of McGurl’s research details the struggle for form and ...”

“... entire units from the Uganda Army. The green light was given to the RPF, whose commanding officer, Paul Kagame, had recently returned from training in the US, just as it was lately given to the Ethiopian army in Somalia. Instead of using its resources and influence to bring about a political solution to the civil war, and then strengthen it, the US signalled ...”

“... working-class man, elaborate, literate and language-loving, which is, or was, more typical of the North than the more clichéd dialect-rich versions.25 September. ‘I am not going to affect the livery of the time’s prudery’ (R.S. Thomas).3 October. Reading a piece on universities in the TLS brings back Richard Pares, whose last course of lectures I went ...”

“... attribution to Charlotte’s Belgian teacher, Constantin Héger, is laughable: it’s signed ‘Paul Hegér’ (Paul Emmanuel, a character with strong affinities to Héger, is the love-interest in Villette). The date given is 1850; Charlotte left Brussels in 1844. The accent is in the wrong place: Hegér not Héger. It ...”

“... you’re the one trying to hold it together or the one who’s trying to prise the sides apart.Paul Gilroy – one of Hall’s many illustrious former students – suspects it was frustration with New Labour, and what it did to left politics, that led Hall in the 1990s to spend more and more time working on ‘less depressing’ Black Arts projects ...”

“... a chunk of his personal fortune getting himself elected to the US Senate for his home state of North Carolina, though not before he had enhanced that fortune by deploying the story of his son’s death during his closing remarks in a case against a swimming-pool company whose suction cleaner had disembowelled a young girl, helping him to secure a $25 ...”

“... at the end, a prickly little warning. Northern Ireland (for which you may of course read the ‘North of Ireland’) has 18 seats at Westminster, and has recently seen two events with significant political ramifications: the robbery of £26.5 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast on 20 December, and on 30 January the murder of Robert McCartney in ...”