“... probes of 1962 and 1964 revealed that Mars and Venus – the two planets most often cited as the homes of alien visitors and said to be teeming with futuristic cities – were desolate environments blighted by extreme temperatures. Further advances in space exploration dashed hopes of discovering life elsewhere in our solar system.Venusian hippies went the ...”

“... a children’s history of Russia and died young of diphtheria, probably contracted visiting the homes of the poor. Maggie was ‘remorselessly’ intelligent, and performed brilliantly at Oxford: her tutor failed to discover the anticipated ‘feminine difference’. She wrote books with titles like Capital, Labour, Trade and the Outlook and The Venture of ...”

“... added his five cents’ worth: ‘Most of his fans are plain, lonely girls from lower-middle-class homes.’ Kelley herself occasionally sounds just the tiniest bit snippy: ‘Through marriage, the Sinatras had elevated themselves socially, so there were few traces left of the showgirl in a feathered headdress … or the saloon singer with the grade school ...”

“... care. Between the ages of three and fifteen, he was moved between foster carers and children’s homes 27 times. In September 2017, he decided to move in with his family in Possilpark in Glasgow, one of most deprived areas in the country. After years of instability, he had a network around him: Christine, his sister Shannon and a team of social and support ...”

“... The second was his mother, who asked him to help out with her new project. When the Israeli army shut down Palestinian schools after the outbreak of the intifada, Arna went to Jenin. ‘I have not come here for philanthropic reasons,’ she said, or to ‘show that there are nice Jews who help Arabs. I came to struggle against the Israeli ...”

“... camped out on mountain-sides. Instead they are tidied away in plastic benders in their skeleton homes or crammed in with neighbours, drinking contaminated water and dependent on hand-outs. Booby-traps are a hazard. A woman found one under her bed, a dog set another off in an orchard. What is left of Likovc sprawls over three hilltops, the destruction ...”

“... Glasgow’s only Labour MP, who left the ILP over its opposition). More men per capita joined the army in Scotland than in any other part of Britain; a battalion was formed in less than a day just from employees on the Glasgow trams. Maxton and Maclean, both of whom worked as teachers and had met a decade earlier because they got the same train to Glasgow ...”

“... and Reynolds were almost parodically delinquent. The young murderers were both from broken homes. Both had suffered physical abuse from stepfathers. At school they had histories of truancy and disruptive behaviour in class. They had experimented with glue-sniffing and drank heavily for their age, or any age: McCluskie reckoned he had had up to nine ...”

“... their ‘race’. (There are also lists of the saved, the not dead: 252 Jewish children from OSE homes who were sent to the United States in 1941-2 – OSE was the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, the Jewish Children’s Welfare Agency.) Even without anything being said about the negotiations in which French officials co-operated with the Germans in ridding ...”

“... downwards to the sea and the other playfully curled beneath her in her white playsuit. Her arms behind her back were keeping her upright, exposing her breasts. Douglas Fairbanks was looking towards her appreciatively. The photo said no more than that a famous man looked at her, as if she were a mirror in which to check he still had it. To think, she ...”

“... is easier than running it, as Alexander of Macedon’s heirs, the East India Company and the Red Army discovered. As Vladimir Kuzichkin wrote in Inside the KGB in 1990, the USSR had hoped for ‘the rapid liquidation of the "primitive” partisan resistance, followed by withdrawal from Afghanistan’. Kuzichkin also said that the KGB, which had opposed the ...”

“... disadvantaged and victims of natural disaster. Akihito and Michiko visited leprosy sanatoriums and homes for the elderly and disabled, and became patrons of the Paralympics in its earliest days. They knelt beside those displaced by volcanos, earthquakes and tsunamis. In a post-Diana era, displays of royal empathy have become a benign cliché, but it’s ...”

“... a ‘flying university’ was organised where dissident intellectuals gave lectures in private homes on a wide variety of subjects whose objective study was impossible in official institutions of learning. Among the many underground publications a special significance attaches to the pamphlet ‘Robotnik’ (‘The Worker’), whose first issue appeared in ...”

“... under way. Agnew was sufficiently inspired by the Rhodesian cause to try to join the country’s army, but failed to make it through officer training. He came back to England when he realised Rhodesia was doomed and a black majority-ruled Zimbabwe was going to replace it. ‘I wouldn’t have joined the Tories because of what they did to Rhodesia. That was ...”

“... chores. As demand continued to rise, family labour became insufficient. Shoe-binding spread to the homes of women who were single or had husbands in other trades, and these women were now recruited, and paid in wages or goods, by the merchant-capitalists. The low prices offered per upper deterred men from seeking the work. Shoe-binding was confirmed as a ...”