“... is almost routinely (and quite legitimately) expected to span the story of both the British at home and the British diaspora. In addition, investigating the British imperial past is widely viewed as useful for the present of the United States. At one level, it casts light on, while also perhaps distracting attention from, the role of imperialism in ...”

“... remorse, she is involved in a railway accident and left for dead. She then returns to her former home, unrecognisable because of a scarred mouth, a sorrow-stricken air and blue spectacles, and acts as governess to her own children. Her son dies without knowing who she really is (her expression of understandable agitation, ‘Dead! dead! And never called me ...”

“... countless volumes of history, as well as accounts of his adventures in the great outdoors, at home and abroad. He read voraciously in several languages: multi-volume histories of Rome, Britain, France and other Empires, as well as Euripides and Shakespeare, long passages of which he could quote from memory. A man of action who loved the limelight, he ...”

“... in jail, but she was with a friend who was hoping to find her missing daughter. Letts’s suburban home isn’t far from the stretch of East Hastings Street in Downtown Eastside populated by fentanyl users who live on the street, their possessions strewn around them. ‘Searching for our kids is just something we do,’ Letts told me. In the OPS, people were ...”

“... fed briefings about the sorry state of affairs. The SDR, titled ‘Making Britain Safer: Secure at Home, Strong Abroad’, was submitted to the cabinet in March, but its publication was delayed for months by internal squabbling, both among the armed services and between the general staff and the cabinet. Before the review was launched, the government had ...”

“... not normally present in industrial disputes. There is the daily violence – brought into every home by television – on the picket-lines, where hordes of tough young miners and uniformed policemen sway and grapple in physical combat like Medieval armies. There is the uneasiness about the accountability of the Police. There are the guerrilla raids at ...”

“... to need a maid just at the moment when Blume turns up, Tsirl offers Blume the job in return for a home. When her son Hirshl falls in love with the new cousin-cum-servant, she steers him skilfully in the direction of Mina Ziemlich, a ‘modern girl’, and more importantly a rich one. Hirshl scarcely has time to draw breath before he finds himself married to ...”

“... vanities of this world and enjoy in the grave profound repose. Take my tears to the throne of the Lord.’ Her body had the seeds of mortality in it, blossoming like diseased flowers. ‘Grandmother, what is this place?’ the child asked. The matriarch’s voice was calm. It was almost a whisper on the breath, like a green kawakawa leaf suspended in the ...”

“... which she refuses to do, and now she refuses to go on with the marriage.) It’s Tommy she goes home with, but it was Jim who catalysed her feelings. Already in the earlier timeframe a woman had seemed to function as a symbolising link between the two men, when Tommy’s sister Siri went out for a while with Jim. She also brought a winning floaty lyricism ...”

“... that Douglas Hogg claimed for cleaning out his moat. The papers are suddenly full of pictures of Home Counties mansions set in acres of manicured lawns, straight out of Country Life, allegedly maintained at taxpayers’ expense. Proof, in case anyone has forgotten, that the class divide is alive and well. A reporter from the BBC has even had fun touring the ...”

“... earlier the pulling down of a mosque, said to have been built on the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Ram, had led to the worst communal violence in India since Partition. The facts, as so often, are disputed, but it seems that a large crowd threw stones at the train, four carriages were set on fire, and 59 people, 12 of them children, burned to death. Over ...”

“... was born Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in August 1900, the youngest daughter and ninth of ten children of Lord and Lady Glamis. When she was four her father inherited the earldom of Strathmore and she became Lady Elizabeth. The Strathmores had houses in London and Hertfordshire as well as Glamis, the Scottish estate granted to an ancestor, Sir John Lyon, by Robert II ...”

“... finds herself in a brothel. She finds kindness on the street and abuse in the highest places. The lord high almoner, Bishop Sherlock, ‘fat and carbuncled, his face “all Knobs and Flames of Fire”’, rejects her plea for royal charity, calling her a foreigner (a claim she disputes, retorting that Ireland was ‘equally a Part of his Majesty’s Dominions ...”

“... after day he waited with all the other animals and dolls for somebody to come along and take him home.’ No one seems interested, until ‘one morning a little girl stopped and looked straight into Corduroy’s bright eyes.’ ‘Look!’ Lisa says. ‘There’s the very bear I’ve always wanted.’ But her mother replies ‘not today, dear,’ and points ...”

“... at least, who aren’t trying to enter the US illegally – are packing their bags and going home. In the southern and south-eastern parts of the city, you can see it with your own eyes. Beyond the first cotton fields, the American Wall bars the horizon, a reminder that something does lie beyond all this misery, but something inaccessible. You leave the ...”