“... of romantic instinct and distinctly traditionalist prose, based on a small seaside village in North Wales.’ But in 1974, we learn, her stone was rolled away and she found herself resurrected by ‘the most thrilling phenomenon of contemporary American journalism’, an enterprise ‘which had established its fortunes upon the economics of rock ...”

“... Bondwoman’s Narrative’, was the story of a woman’s life as a house slave on the North Carolina plantation of John Hill Wheeler, her escape to New Jersey in 1857, and her composition of an autobiographical fiction incorporating ‘elements of the many sentimental sagas she had evidently borrowed from Mr ...”

“... aristocratic families are contending for power on the kingdom of Westeros, an island with a cold north, warm south, varied topology, and ferocious barbarians across the seas to the east. The families are interlinked by marriages and alliances, but remain strongly distinct in ethos. The Starks are the heroes, the family at the heart of the story: they are ...”

“... the evidence offered by the President and his circle so compelling. Guts and Glory portrays Oliver North, who enacted the anti-Communist part of Reagan. For the Record, written by the man who became his chief male caretaker, casts the President’s wife as the villain. When these current extensions of the President implicated him in law-breaking and lies, the ...”

“... transformed his source materials into a bizarre, brightly-coloured pageant, Spilliaert saw the North Sea coast as a place of stillness and isolation. The town meets the shore uneasily at Ostend – vast sand flats stretch out beyond the grandeur of the Kursaal and the Galeries royales, both built in the time of Leopold II. These structures, particularly ...”

“... Foundation’s 1980 Anthology contains four splendid poems: Stephen Watts’s ‘Praise Poem for North Uist’, and Keith Bosley’s ‘Corolla’; Aidan Carl Mathews’s ‘Severances’, and John Levett’s ‘The Photographs of Paris’. The first two are longish, the others shorter. The only one that won a prize ...”

“... Demilitarised Zone might be ground zero for the end of the world. This April, Kim In-ryong, a North Korean diplomat at the UN, warned of ‘a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment’. A few days later, President Trump told Reuters that ‘we could end up having a major, major conflict with ...”

“... Nasa lander called Phoenix, resident on Mars since 25 May, which is currently chugging around the north polar region looking for water and evidence of habitability. This is impressive, given how hard it is to get to Mars. A total of 20 probes, Russian, Japanese, American and European, have crashed on their way to the red planet. They’ve crashed on ...”

“... This book is about the career of John Soane up to the age of 31. As Soane only started to build when he was 28, as all his important work was done after he was 35, as he practised architecture till his retirement at 80 and died at 83, it will be seen that the biographical coverage is likely to attract the dedicated specialist rather than the general reader ...”

“... John Keegan’s book is about the principles, strategy and tactics of warfare at sea and their evolution as it is exemplified in four great battles, Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway, and a critical period in that long struggle the Battle of the Atlantic. It is a strangely mixed book, some parts being quite remarkably good and quite unhackneyed, others dealing with matters that have been handled again and again, and doing so with no great originality ...”

“... by Misseriya tribesmen, attacked the disputed town of Abyei, which lies on the border between North and South Sudan. President Bashir said the invasion, which was preceded by artillery and aerial bombardments, was in retaliation for an attack on his own troops. Most of those who live in Abyei, which has a population of 40,000, are Southern Sudanese ...”

“... which sought to deny a role in the affairs of the hemisphere to any extra-continental power, most North American administrations have looked on the entire Southern continent as their ‘backyard’. But, as Reagan’s near maniacal obsession with El Salvador and Nicaragua makes plain, their special interest has always been reserved for Mexico, Central America ...”

“... the Georgian armed forces, who hold the town against surrounding units of Abkhazian separatists, North Caucasian irregulars and – they say – Russians. In the eyes of most Georgians, including the ministers who supposedly govern from the ramshackle ministries in Tbilisi, Georgia is at undeclared war with Russia. In the wire services of the world, the ...”

“... to riches, then from riches to penury and disgrace. The overweening monarch of the midland and north-eastern networks, friend of Prince Albert and snapper-up of country houses, he devised the ruse later known as the Ponzi scheme – inflating the price of shares by boosting dividends with capital. The aggregate losses of the inevitable crash amounted to ...”

“... mostly Scottish, and Hughes partly Welsh. The presidential or father figure of the group would be John Buchan, another Scot, whose innings was over before the younger ones started to play, although he was still around as they became famous. This English angle was partly suggested to me at the time when Hughes’s penultimate novel, intended as the first of a ...”