“... a case reported to Haiken by the surgeon Donald Moynihan: The prospective patient was a young black woman whose cornrowed hair and black studies major in college suggested to Moynihan that she was ‘really into the heritage thing’, as did her request that he put a bone through her nose. ‘I respected the deep pride ...”

“... the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.Among earlier fiction to come out of the civil war, Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost (2000) is set during the early phases and the linked stories in Romesh Gunesekera’s Noontide Toll (2014) in its aftermath. There’s also Samanth Subramanian’s compelling non-fiction account, based on interviews with ...”

“... equivalent of dole money. His experiences in the Scotswood district of Newcastle, an unemployment black spot, led him to see something cruelly mistaken in Tebbit’s jibes that the long-term unemployed were somehow deficient in personal responsibility. Whereas Tebbit thought the unemployed should ‘get on their bikes’ to look for work, or, if none was to ...”

“... rights to religious minorities (first Protestants, then Jews), and then, if only temporarily, to black slaves. It did not do similar things for women but Hunt implicitly takes a stand against those authors (especially Carole Pateman and Joan Scott) who see a symbiotic relationship between the rise of equal rights for men and female subjugation, arguing that ...”

“... were supposed to have hunted down and murdered Merlin in these woods; the valley was home to Michael Scott, a wizard who appears in Dante’s Inferno. The area was in unruly border country, and it is also on the spine of Scotland, where the waters divide to flow west or east. James Laidlaw’s grandfather Will O’Phaup followed fairies one evening into ...”

“... and gender: in the conservative imaginary, compassion would be exploited in the economic realm by black women, and in the judicial realm by black men. In Britain, there was more emphasis on the language of economics, specifically the ‘supply side’ idea that the interests of investors and entrepreneurs were paramount. As ...”

“... investigation, it emerged that Doheny’s son had delivered $100,000 to Fall ‘in a little black bag’. It was corruption at the highest levels of government. The Senate hearings began in October 1923 and on 5 June 1924 Doheny was formally indicted. Fall was convicted of accepting the bribe, becoming the first American cabinet member to spend time in ...”

“... superficiality, his book achieves real depth. China first appears in his pages as an emotional black hole. The author’s Chinese friends tell him, for example, that ‘envy, or rather the fear of envy ... is poisoning China.’ And that ‘the deterioration lies everywhere – in the culture, in the people who carry that culture.’ ‘The crux’ is how ...”

“... Professor Vendler’s soul is in peril. Reviewing Black American broadsides in 1974, she found it ‘sinful that anthologies and Collected Works should betray the poems they print by jamming them together and running them into one another.’ Yet here is her Faber Book, a self-confessed anthology which, attempting to present 35 poets ‘whole’, aspires to be a collection of Collecteds ...”

“... 4 per cent of the population. In statistical terms it was the greatest natural disaster since the Black Death, yet the Great Influenza Epidemic (or Pandemic) of 1918-19 has vanished from public consciousness. Unlike the war that immediately preceded it, the flu has left scarcely a trace in modern literature; historical accounts of it are sparse; one of its ...”

“... Online vaunted its association with two local celebrities: ‘Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em star Michael Crawford revealed he visited the pub during filming forty years ago. And German literary star Uwe Johnson also had his own stool at the pub where he used to write about the people he met.’ Photos of Crawford and Johnson accompanied a picture of the ...”

“... definitive change for the Slomnicki family as their ship headed into the pitching, slanting, very black Black Sea. They stopped speaking German to one another. Whether by agreement or instinct, they changed, overnight, the language in which they had all lived together. Elena was now Helen, Mummy not Mami; Papa became Daddy; the boys were still Donald and ...”

“... City, inscribed for Carolyn by way of apology, after a bad boy’s night, a stand-up row with a black girl, sulks in the attic. Here was that book, as well as a copy of On the Road that showed clear evidence of having been thoroughly invigilated, and bearing, at the head of the fixed endpaper, Neal Cassady’s neat signature. Verification that any reputable ...”

“... smile to herself and sit back again.’ When George’s daughter Anne was born in 1919 and son Michael in 1921, the sisters became enthusiastic babysitters and general chroniclers of their brother’s household. ‘I think George enjoys the thrill she gets when she gives her name in shops,’ Lolly wrote. ‘Mrs W.B. Yeats.’ Lily thought her ...”

“... fractious era. No global hullabaloo of youth culture: impossible to imagine Altamont or Live Aid, Michael Jackson on the Thames, Bono cold calling George Bush mid-gig, Katy Perry in orbit. No personal touchscreen beckoning itchy fingers. Just gazing dreamily into the distance or cycling about aimlessly on long summer afternoons. Boredom and its cloud-drift ...”