“... of our necessities we can at least understand them. But by the time you finish this book you may think that reason giving and receiving sounds more compulsive (and compulsory) than anything else, more of a symptom than a godsend. Why it is that the giving and receiving of reasons is essential to our sociability – why this is one of the forms our ...”

“... moments come when the Millbank machine tries to whip in its oldest member, reducing him in May 1999 to writing ‘fuck’ for the first time in a diary entry, and inducing nightmares involving Tony Blair as a parking warden. How times have changed. In 1975, Harold Wilson put a temporary halt to Benn’s leftward march by moving him from Industry to ...”

“... January 1940, Staël, who had enlisted in the Foreign Legion, joined his regiment in Algeria. In May, France confronted defeat, but it was not until September that Staël was demobilised and rejoined Jeannine and her son, who had moved to Nice. In 1942 Jeannine gave birth to a daughter, Anne, and, in September 1943, all four moved back to Paris, which was ...”

“... enough to produce these effects was intense reading. Modern readers of Julie and Pamela, however, may find it surprising that these novels in particular could induce any physical effects besides a narcotic one. Our current sensibilities do not generally take well to their massive helpings of undiluted sentiment. But as literary historians have long pointed ...”

“... with difficulty, supported by one of his ‘pretty young assistants’. The meeting with Mao may have represented a momentous ‘earthquake in the Cold War landscape’ as MacMillan claims, but it was hardly the ‘serious and frank exchange of views on Sino-US relations and world affairs’ that would be claimed in the Shanghai Communiqué signed by ...”

“... industry, rests on the belief that ‘the question at the heart of Sinclair’s novel’ is ‘how may we transition to a post-carbon democracy?’ It isn’t clear what led him to this conclusion. While it would be nice to find Sinclair anticipating our current ecological concerns, there’s little evidence that the notion of ‘a post-carbon ...”

“... The government​ is making it harder to vote. As of 4 May, when local elections take place in some parts of England, and in all British elections after that, everyone who votes at a polling station will have to show photographic proof that they are who they say they are. Some have made the comparison with voter suppression in the US, where Republicans impose onerous ID requirements to keep the vote down among those least likely to have suitable documents – namely the poor, who are assumed to lean Democrat ...”

“... activity was digested and reconfigured by preconscious or subliminal stimuli. The 19th century may have produced little scientific work on sleep, but there was a vast and sprawling pre-Freudian literature on dreams, much of it entangled with other mental phenomena – hallucinations, delusions, hypnagogia, dissociation, clairvoyance – that were ...”

“... reads her work aloud to me at dinner beside the crashing sea. She is a surrealist and may be a little mad (but one thinks that of lots of people here). Narrow cats slide past our feet. You shatter, she translates a poster on the wall (burning city) exhorting all to join the army.HeloiseHeloise goes to a dinner party. She leaves work early and ...”

“... cripples have to walk?’, a fellow guest grumbles, limping to the table on a sprained ankle. This may turn out to be a discussion about the way some people’s freedom tramples on others. The museum director, for instance, is late to dinner because she had to deal with the police after the suicide: the man’s bid for freedom inconvenienced hundreds. She ...”

“... departed the gold standard in 1931: ‘They never told us we could do that!’The situation may be so dire that conformism of any kind is implausible. Whitehall has drawn up a list of potential ‘black swan’ events that could upend the new government in its first year; many of them seem unsurprising, even likely: the collapse of the prison ...”

“... between the film director and the actor that their involvement isn’t permanent: the actor may be offered a more desirable part, or the director may feel the need to make a different kind of film. The separation is often painful because the collaboration can be intense, especially so if they had loved each other. In ...”

“... ever quite be trusted’ is oversimplified – some Catholics served the queen well – but it may reflect Cecil’s own perspective. Burghley had compared apparently peaceable Catholics to Judas, ‘that came to Christ without armour, colouring his treason with a kiss’. So Cecil conceived of his role as that of a guardian against the forces of ...”

“... The harsh repression of protests in the province of Constantine by de Gaulle’s government in May and June 1945 – estimates range from five thousand to thirty thousand Muslim protesters killed – is dealt with in a single, matter-of-fact sentence: ‘In Algeria, an insurrection begun in the Constantinois … was put down by Governor General ...”

“... is the pillaging of the Strand by the Vikings. The ninth-century church of St Clement Danes may have been named in commemoration of the Great Heathen Army’s overwintering in London in 871-72. I shall think of Vikings huddling together for warmth when I walk from Embankment to Joe Allen’s, on the corner of Burleigh Street and the Strand, for birthday ...”