“... risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he ...”

“... vividly fresh, lightly metallic-waxy-smoky aldehyde complex … with its typical echoes of waxy rose petals and orange peel. The hesperidic-citric facets are picked up and emphasised by bergamot oil, linalool and petit-grain oil. The heart note is spanned by an aromatic core of jasmine, rose, lily-of-the-valley … iris ...”

“... Dickens dies at Gad’s Hill in Kent, as he does in every biography until now. ‘Suddenly he rose to his feet, saying he wished to go to London at once. Then he collapsed on the floor, muttering.’ Now Tomalin suggests, out of the blue, that he actually died at Nelly’s house in Peckham. For if he had, might not Nelly, to protect her reputation and ...”

“... revenue stream, however much debris it blasted into the atmosphere. The eruption of Mount Laki in June 1783 presented Benjamin Franklin with a more serious problem. As Gillen D’Arcy Wood recounts, Franklin was in Paris the following spring, negotiating peace terms with the British. ‘The makeshift US capital in Annapolis, Maryland, was ...”

“... reminding me that the 25th-year reunion of my Harvard Class of 1961 would be the following June, my reactions were mixed. My four years in Cambridge, Mass. had been among my best, but somehow I had grown away from the place, transferring my affections to the smaller, cosier American colleges where I had taught. To keep up with the friends I treasured ...”

“... like Isis, emphasises martyrdom: fallen fighters are buried in carefully tended cemeteries full of rose bushes high in the mountains, with elaborate tombstones over the graves. Pictures of Ocalan are everywhere: six or seven years ago, I visited a hamlet in Qandil occupied by the PKK; overlooking it was an enormous picture of Ocalan picked out in coloured ...”

“... to check) really ended his ‘Ancient Mariner’ with the lines A sadder and later man     I rose the morrow morn, but it would have been wiser of her or him not perversely to butcher Coleridge’s rhythm (‘A sadder and a wiser man’), and the mangling may just be Brett’s work. (A.E. Housman to his publisher Grant Richards with the fifth edition of ...”

“... military effort in Vietnam over to General Dayan.’Novick asserts that the ‘light’ of the June 1967 victory redeemed the ‘darkness’ of the Nazi genocide: ‘it had given God a second chance.’ Yet in standard Jewish accounts, not the June war but Israel’s founding marked redemption. Why then did the Holocaust ...”

“... the Minister for Finance and Director of Intelligence of the Volunteers or Irish Republican Army, rose to prominence. In 1920 Britain established Home Rule states – one substantive, comprising the six Unionist-majority north-eastern counties, and one notional, made up of the 26 remaining counties which had Nationalist majorities. Following de Valera’s ...”

“... after two months with no football, the Premier League announced that it is set to return on 17 June, with all games to be played without spectators. What the Premier League CEO, Richard Masters, has called ‘the behind closed doors product’ will be a very different viewing experience from the one we’re used to. Computer-generated fans have been ...”

“... price for a contemporary work when it sold Rothko’s White Centre (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) for $72.8 million; the following night, at Christie’s, Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) went for $71.7 million in a sale that fetched a record total of $384 million. Yves Klein, ‘IKB 93’ (£1.4 million); I was in South Kensington ...”

“... Mao was a visitor too. After the 1949 revolution, he only returned to Shaoshan twice – in June 1959 and again in June 1966, both visits coming at a critical time for him. Going back home is a peculiarly intense experience in China, where people cling to provincial habits and tastes decades after they have moved ...”

“... additions to the greatest empire since Rome. Several treaties were signed: Versailles, 28 June 1919 (with Germany); St Germain-en-Laye, 10 September (with Austria); Neuilly, 27 November (with Bulgaria); Trianon, 4 June 1920 (with Hungary); and Sèvres, 10 August (with Turkey). Yet no sooner were the treaties signed ...”

“... their cause, forcing the Arab League to express its concern. As the ill-fated Arab manoeuvres of June 1967 showed, this was not enough. In June 1967, the whole of Palestine became Israel; the new geopolitical reality demanded a renewed peace process. At first the UN took the initiative, but it was soon replaced by American ...”