“... to inform you,’ it said, ‘that your husband Michael O’Hagan is reported missing on war service.’ Others had known of the ship’s sinking before then, and word had spread, but no one could face telling Molly or any of the women who had men on the boats. They left her pretty much alone with the telegram that day, but gathered round the day ...”

“... a cult which Anglicanism bravely struggles to co-opt at the next morning’s annual Shakespeare Service. During this unusual ceremony stars from the RSC will perform the Bible readings, and a specially commissioned theologian will attempt to prove that the Complete Works are really all about the glory of God (having reminded the congregation that the ...”

“... In the autumn of 1358, another ‘Great Company’ of English and Breton routiers under Robert Knolles invaded the rich Loire provinces, moving on into the Nivernais and the Auxerrois. ‘They brought the whole of the region under their control, ordering every village great or small to ransom itself and buy back the bodies, goods and stores of every ...”

“... it sees the prose as a compound of bile and braggadocio – obstructive showing-off in the service of a complacent snobbery. One similarity between these two views, which is generally unrecognised or unacknowledged, is their assumption that there is something artificial or dead at the heart of Arnold’s prose, something which indicates a kind of ...”

“... the glass misted up in front of her mouth. I walked on a few blocks. There was a midnight service going on at St Patrick’s Cathedral. A long queue stretched all the way down to the altar, where a glass case stood by itself, with a casket inside, containing the relics of St Theresa of Lisieux. A hundred years ago the Carmelite nun Thérèse Martin ...”

“... leaders of Ethiopia and has even contemplated improving its relations with Sudan’s intelligence service. For decades, Western leaders have paid attention to Africa only when it suffered miseries that trickled onto CNN and the BBC, and Western expatriates have descended on Africa armed with PowerPoint presentations, Land Rovers, business class tickets on ...”

“... The Danish academic Sten Rynning presents Nato as a kind of kumbaya co-operative working ‘in the service of public betterment’ and guided by ‘valiant ideas of freedom and democracy’. The journalist Peter Apps credits it with preventing the end of the world and allowing ‘whole generations’ to ‘grow up largely in peace’. In its own promotional ...”

“... routinisation of inoculation was, however, a provincial affair, led by a Suffolk surgeon called Robert Sutton and, especially, by Daniel Sutton (1735-1819), the second of his six sons. The Suttons were a family firm: all the sons, and some other relatives, were involved in one way or another. It was the Suttons who industrialised the practice of smallpox ...”

“... It knows the geography. That’s all been programmed into its brain.’We stopped at a service station near Lichfield and Karl demanded two cakes. ‘Let’s see which of us can make Seamus say something bad about somebody,’ said Karl, with his best comic grin. ‘The winner gets a prize.’ We went to the loos and Karl situated himself at the ...”

“... meantime not dealt so kindly with Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland – universally known as Molly. Robert Ackland’s charisma had always had a punitive edge: he insisted that his daughter accompany him on his rounds in the surgical wards; and then afterwards, according to Warner, to the brothel he frequented, where she would be told to wait in the ...”

“... poet capable of such multiplicity, of such compromising suggestiveness, all of it then put at the service of another purpose altogether, cannot be expected to like or even tolerate direct, simplistic questions about his life. On one occasion, Traubel mentions an inquiry from a mutual friend, which Whitman agrees should be answered: ‘“but answer for ...”

“... the Greek emperor’s Varangians (by this time largely exiled Englishmen) fought the Normans under Robert Guiscard, with much the same result: early Varangian success brought to a stand by cavalry charges, followed by withering archery; no survivors. The English had weapons, but the Normans had a weapons system. Wood’s view, in short, is that the result at ...”

“... above the line began an exclusive region of suites of as many as twelve rooms with private butler service.’ The upper floors of tall buildings, once given over to staff dormitories, had become what Bernard calls an ‘enclave of the elite’. The Waldorf-Astoria’s express elevators, travelling direct to the 29th floor, were as much barrier as ...”

“... that she must be its real author, and that if she wasn’t then she’d finally met her match. Robert Elsmere (1888) set Mrs Humphry Ward on Eliot’s vacant throne, and ten years later The Sorrows of Satan (1895) established Marie Corelli as heir apparent. Trollope would have been provoked by Woolf’s celebrated requirement for women writers. A room of ...”

“... kneecapped and executed those they suspected of being informers for the British state. Captain Robert Nairac, a member of the army’s undercover 14 Intelligence Company, apparently frustrated with the lack of information he was getting from the RUC, decided to go to a pub in South Armagh one Saturday night in 1977, a pistol hidden in his clothes, in an ...”