“... much younger than herself they might have been in skirted sailor suits, and that her own frocks may have been like the high-waisted dresses children wear in a fashion plate from 1895.Not that knowing how people looked doesn’t still require an act of imagination. The engravings and photographs make people stiffer than they are – at best they resemble the ...”

“... also imagines that if Ivan was still there he would stand with her against the invaders.In what may be the film’s funniest scene, Ivan, finally found, is dragged to a New York courtroom where a judge is to annul the marriage. Ivan doesn’t understand anything because he is too drunk, Toros won’t stop talking, and the judge kicks them all out. In any ...”

“... recounting the harrowing story of her rape. She is subdued, hesitant and entirely convincing. This may be because she is telling the truth, but everything in the context suggests that her acting – unlike Souleymane’s – is perfect. The implication is that the truth needs to be formed, just as much as untruths do.Souleymane is next in line for a practice ...”

“... of North Africa had advanced and receded like the sands on which they were drawn. Then, in late May 1942, the Axis forces led by Erwin Rommel smashed into the British line from the rear, and a month later his Panzerarmee Afrika was streaming across the Libyan border into Egypt. The advance was so swift that units from both armies found themselves going full ...”

“... us than that of diversitvy, which epitomises for us a long past of misfortune and abjection?’ It may be less the fact than the cult of regional diversity that tells us something Specific about the history of France.There is a second claim for French specificity in Braudel’s account, less prominent or pursued, but comparable in kind. Turning from geography ...”

“... Nothing untoward has so far happened in Venezuela, although we do not, of course, know what plans may be under consideration in the deeper recesses of Washington. At any rate, now that the Cold War has ended the Americans can no longer denounce their critics to the South as the puppets of Moscow. The gadarene rush from the countryside to Caracas in the ...”

“... claiming it was in some way jinxed or haunted or evil, or something. The more prosaic truth may be that he suddenly realised how shockingly dull and pro-forma it sounded in comparison to his best work. All we really know is that sometime in 1987 Prince either finally fell apart, exhausted, or had some kind of semi-psychotic break, abetted by drugs he ...”

“... Admittedly, to call the Dmanisi site ‘the cradle of the Europeans’ is pushing it. Politicians may rejoice at the phrase, especially in France, where President Chirac is said to be ardent about ‘proto-European’ Dmanisi, but palaeontologists turn slightly pale. There is no evidence that these little creatures were about to chip and scavenge their way ...”

“... of $445 billion.Zuckerberg’s news about Facebook’s size came with an announcement which may or may not prove to be significant. He said that the company was changing its ‘mission statement’, its version of the canting pieties beloved of corporate America. Facebook’s mission used to be ‘making the world ...”

“... set against a western hill and facing an eastern hill, with the north boundary of hawthorn hedge, may trees, willow trees, had only brief sun in the morning, making the house cool even in summer, but if you looked from the cool and often cold world of the house you’d see, down on the flat by the creek and beyond it, a world where the sun stayed late, in ...”

“... as by her profile. She seems to be looking down at Patrick, though he’s a head taller. Hassall may have used the 1832 miniature by William Thomson of a 22-year-old Gaskell, or perhaps Richmond’s 1851 drawing (there isn’t as much difference between them as twenty years ought to make). She may have made Gaskell up ...”

“... seems to matter.’ Confident agnosticism seems to be the method here. The coup took place on 27 May. Nito Alves, the main golpista, and his fellow conspirator, José ‘Zé’ Van Dúnem, tried to seize control of the MPLA while keeping the president in power. Six days earlier, they’d been expelled from the party in a whirl of recriminations. Alves had ...”

“... and the handsome profits made by Quaker companies like Barclay’s and Lloyd’s banks, Bryant and May matches, Swan Hunter shipbuilders and Cadbury itself. In Victorian Britain, Quaker businessmen had competitive advantages. Ron Davies, in his biography of George Stephenson (Quakers were early financiers of the railways), talks about a Quaker ‘moral ...”

“... doesn’t want to know any more, and nature proceeds to peel you open. The truth, when we find it, may turn out to be less ‘moral’, less totalitarian. Meanwhile, however, that is what it looks like. Judging by the faces and voices of the victims, that is what it feels like too. Aids starts in the 1970s. Here’s Edmund White, describing the San Francisco ...”

“... as one. Abdullah, though a Koranic scholar, was resolutely secular in his politics. The Hindus may have been a tiny minority of the population, but he knew it would be fatal for Kashmiri interests if the Brahmins were ignored or persecuted. The confessional Muslims led by Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah broke away – the split was inevitable – accusing Abdullah of ...”