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“... the Sikh wars, with one side supporting the Sikhs and the other the British. With the first Indian war of independence in 1857 (known in English history books as the Mutiny) there was the same division. I used to think, cynically, that the top echelons of the family did this deliberately: support both sides so that whichever faction of the ruling ...”

“... homosexuality and his poetry – he wrote some bad poetry – but in his view that there was a new class of ‘working artisans’ rising, and that ‘there is undoubtedly an entirely new (social) state of affairs coming about through their rise, and I hail it with delight.’ His increasingly open homosexuality came hand in glove with socialism. He liked the ...”

“... wrote to him: ‘In a few centuries the common man will know our time as the period of the World War, but the educated man will connect the first quarter of the century with your name.’ This salute from one German-Jewish Nobel laureate to another was written six months before the Wall Street Crash helped to make National Socialism a mass movement, and it ...”

“... the realm of popular culture. From youth onwards he was a best-selling writer in the categories of war, travel and adventure. The Second World War turned him into a movie star, prompting him to remark in 1942 that he had already sold the film rights of his war memoirs. Later, Jack le ...”

“... poured tea from a big brass kettle while I asked him about the effects of more than two decades of war on the community. The collapse of the postal service was one of the more trivial consequences that he mentioned, but there was something moving about a village that hadn’t received a letter for 21 years. One of the hateful results of the long ...”

“... cause), Keynesian economics before it was fashionable, German civilians at the war’s end – you really can’t fault her. She was so wonderfully clear-sighted that it’s not even surprising to find her warning of the possibility of a Nazi-Soviet pact two years before the event. Since all the positions she took, no matter how ...”

“... committed to the campaign against militarism. Although Ettinger devotes one chapter to this ‘War on War’, she understates its significance. The ‘War on War’ was not merely a feature of the crisis years 1913-14, but dates back to 1898, when ...”

“... Strong to Save’. Archibald Wavell, one of the significant British military commanders of World War Two, as well as the penultimate viceroy of British India, was presented as a role model for the boys in those last days of empire, one of the few military figures looked favourably on by the intellectual middle class. What ...”

“... letters are very short, and merely contain changes of address or news of friends. They discuss the war, and the problems caused by the presence of the Germans, yet it’s striking how little the correspondence varies over the war years. They give their opinion of Sartre, with Paulhan being tactfully enthusiastic and Arland ...”

“... It’s generally assumed that with the Iraq War officially over and troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, US defence spending will drop. Obama’s reference in his State of the Union address to ‘saving half a trillion dollars’ from the defence budget encouraged this assumption, as have Republican complaints that such cuts would ‘decimate’ the nation’s defences ...”

“... best!’ A Scout is a friend to all and a brother to every other Scout, no matter to what country, class or creed the other may belong. (At least, that was the rule when I was a boy: it’s been trimmed down since. The Scout Laws are not immutable, as Paul Fussell supposes.) Let me draw friendly, fraternal attention to certain differences between the British ...”

“... commentary for despatch to London, but any hopes of witnessing the formidable Berlin intellect at war in the corridors of US power will be disappointed. Although – a trifle immodestly – he claims in his Introduction that his material was considered by Denis Brogan in London to be ‘the Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinths of American politics’, it ...”

“... British presence on the Malay peninsula. He tries to explain the outbreak of the jungle guerrilla war which began in 1948 (‘the Emergency’), to look at the politics behind that war and to identify the dire, lasting effects of the Emergency on independent Malaysia. That’s not to say that Hale has simply pasted ...”

“... nights. The ventriloquists, suave and cultured, will save the ignorant arriviste of the new middle class from embarrassment by carrying on a conversation on both sides of the foyer loudly enough for the wise and witty comments on the play to be overheard. The scheme, however, goes wrong when unscrupulous ventriloquists embark on a campaign of ...”

“... of the 19th-century Paris department stores, the Bon Marché, from its creation until the 1914 War. In his conclusion, however, he suggests that the Bon Marché was not an isolated enterprise but that it typified, not merely Paris stores, but French society as a whole. ‘Bourgeois culture in France was divided within itself, not so much between upper and ...”