“... economic and cultural mark: they founded Goethe and Schiller societies, became magistrates and Lord Mayors and were the main force behind the formation of the Halle Orchestra. Charles Halle himself was a refugee from revolution, fleeing to England to escape ‘the juggernaut of Republicanism’. Life was much more awkward for the small group who form Dr ...”

“... regularly work nights are pale, bad-tempered and die of coronaries in their fifties. Bush House, home of the BBC World Service, is full of thirty and forty-year-olds doing night-shifts. Mine is aimed at producing a programme called Newshour which is broadcast live at five in the morning. The preparations for the programme begin at nine the previous ...”

“... insisted on the cession of Silesia). Maria Theresa could, however, count on unwavering loyalty at home. In particular, she won the military and moral support of the Palatines. And while the story that she addressed the Diet of Pressburg (now Bratislava) with her baby son in her arms is a fabrication, it captures something important. Family and state were ...”

“... the wicked word was never actually uttered. Matilda ate jam, Matilda ate jelly, Matilda went home With a pain in her – But don’t be mistaken, Don’t be misled, Matilda went home With a pain In her head. How little Rousseau understood child nature when he suggested that children’s acute interest in their body ...”

“... streets are unusually empty. Many Iraqis have decided that the best way to survive is to stay at home or, if they have the money, to leave the country. A sick friend spent hours ringing up surgeries only to be told in each case that the doctor had gone to Jordan, Syria or Iran. Those who stay in Baghdad often don’t go to work until 10 a.m. because suicide ...”

“... from golf – he has netted $19,000 in three years – but what is the alternative? ‘Living at home full-time, football on the tube, a pull-start lawnmower, a kid or two underfoot.’ He had never expected to find himself in a slump; it was true that he hadn’t gone all-out with his studies, but it hardly mattered when golf could help him cut corners on ...”

“... to it in 1919 after ‘a good war’. Comfortable in the company of politicians and officials at home and abroad, and fluent in at least French and German, he became one of that cosmopolitan set of well-dressed journalists, socialites, lobbyists and secret agents forever circulating in the antechambers and corridors of power and in the clubs, country houses ...”

“... fits of anger. The Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus witnessed one of these when a letter from Lord Halifax was delivered to the Chancellery during the Polish crisis in August 1939. Hitler launched into a lengthy diatribe. He marched up and down throwing out facts and figures about German military might, then began to shout as if addressing a ...”

“... combined the counselling of ‘fallen’ women, or women who looked like falling, with help in the home, two fields of activity from which male evangelists were sensibly barred. (If the name of that brigade sounds cruelly specific, what about the Anglican body for relief of the disabled which called itself the Guild of Brave Poor Things?) The Salvation Army ...”

“... of South-East Hampshire. It perches on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, close to where in the 1860s Lord Palmerston had yet more forts built against the French (known locally as ‘Palmerston’s Follies’). My father makes the eight-mile round trip for blood tests and transfusions, including a monthly intravenous dose of pamidronate, a drug that can lessen ...”

“... of later Toryism – but to the intrinsic human value of quiet, private lives. Like Lord Acton, Baldwin passionately believed that good public life could only be made up of the actions of good individual men – which may explain why, in a quixotic gesture unique in the history of politics, he gave away one-fifth of his personal fortune to the ...”

“... Establishment is that she is reputedly flirting with Roman Catholicism. This inspires those like Lord Rees-Mogg to hope that the hapless Diana may finally shatter the Act of Settlement of 1701 which banned Catholic monarchs from inheriting this kingdom, and heirs to the throne from marrying Catholics. After all, even if she divorces her husband, she will ...”

“... in such a bizarre fashion that in 1723 he was committed to an asylum. In 1726 he was shipped back home alone; meanwhile Foucquet had distanced himself both from his Chinese assistant and from his own missionary colleagues, and had become a bishop in Rome. This is a sad story, simply told by Jonathan Spence – perhaps too simply for some historians. It ...”

“... or lightly paraphrased. At times it is as if the writer is sitting, glass in hand, in a sunset home for retired correspondents, holding forth once more with his favourite tales: my row with Adenauer, my bigger row with General Templer, my ‘scoop’ of the Dead Sea Scrolls, my meeting with Glubb Pasha (again likened to a chubby curate), my air crash in ...”

“... the blood-soaked room, and went off to the beach with friends. Being under instructions to return home early at night, Marlene phoned from a restaurant and told the silence at the other end that she would be back by ten. She may have been trying to fool her friends, but the trick was aimed at least as much at herself: it was as if she hoped her father would ...”