“... virtually all other political forces in the country), the new South Korean Army was shattered by major mutinies: some large towns were held by mutineers with local support for up to a week. In May 1949 two frontier battalions defected, with their officers, to the North. Meanwhile, guerrilla warfare broke out throughout much of the South, and was particularly ...”

“... the 1960s and 1970s, in books like Geoffrey Ashe’s The Quest for Arthur’s Britain (1968) and John Morris’s The Age of Arthur (1973). Professional historians have long been embarrassed by the whole thing, but the image created – Roman cavalry leader rallies the British after the Roman army withdrawal and fights off hordes of invading Angles and Saxons ...”

“... maritime power: ‘We have a highly-developed island economy, world-wide interests and major national resources lying under the seas around us, and depredations in the strength of the Royal Navy must cease now if we are to continue to be adequately protected.’ Mr Speed is on more controversial ground in his numerous hints that Britain should give ...”

“... Among major 20th-century critics who wrote in English, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) is still by far the most readable – readable anywhere and at any time. Only professionals are likely to find his style, and even his methods, entirely too informal and amateurish – absence of footnotes, personal tone etc. But I can testify to being able to read him with pleasure and for no particular reason at home, on a bus, in an office, a hospital waiting-room, a hotel ...”

“... Volpone and The Alchemist, to a pair of reviews. None of this is close to the level of Empson’s major work. To the uninitiated these pieces will, I think, often seem cranky and arbitrary, skirmishing with enemies who have long since vanished, condescending to the views of ‘lady students’, and assuming a virtually direct access both to the mind of the ...”

“... aim of their ‘alternative policy’. Both Paul Hirst and Stuart Hall advocate a programme of major constitutional reform. Both are founder signatories of Charter 88, a movement which has united a broad band of the Left (from Democrats to Communists) in calling for a wide-scale redefinition of the British political process. The Chartists’ ten-point plan ...”

“... be secure, he believed, so long as the Netherlands were controlled by the republican party of John de Witt, which was aiding and comforting the Puritan opposition in England. The war of 1665-7 ended in insult to the English, when the Dutch were allowed to sail up the Medway and burn ships docked at Chatham. Had the war been essentially economic, Pincus ...”

“... had originally intended to offer the job to Sir Herbert Grierson, recent editor of the poems of John Donne. However, he allowed Lloyd George to persuade him that a post of such eminence ought rather to be a party appointment. Without doubt, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) fitted that bill. He had worked long and hard for the Liberals in his native ...”

“... it seeks – all these contribute to the impression. It is a sign of the esteem he enjoys that his major writings and essays have been collected and reissued under titles that reflect their variety. There are engaging brief essays on the famous and the less famous, philosophical papers, lively explorations of Russian thought, and essays in the history of ...”

“... and in a higher rhetorical style than is favoured by either. At its best, as in the essays on John Stow and William Camden, the method can produce work that is very vivid. Occasionally, the reader may be left wondering whether the vividness of the writing takes it a little bit further than the words of its source, or, as in the interesting essay on the ...”

“... Empire. The second is about the clash, which began in India but ended in Egypt, between the two major imperial powers of the 18th century, Britain and France. In the period from the mid-18th century, when Jasanoff’s story begins, until 1858, when the Crown dissolved the East India Company to create the Indian Empire, the fledgling ‘British Empire’ in ...”

“... of admission’ was pretty much Coward’s verdict on the playwrights who emerged in the wake of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (Wesker included), and largely their verdict on him. And despite a revival of interest in his early work during the Sixties (‘Dad’s renaissance’, he called it), Coward has been regarded since 1956 as being on the losing ...”

“... diplomatic ‘system’ – Germany was directly or indirectly linked by treaties with every major European power except France. Only from close up can we see how perilous and uncertain many of the steps he took appeared at the time. As Jonathan Steinberg shows in this superb biography, there was nothing preordained about Bismarck’s successes. Had the ...”

“... from the inbuilt contradictions of the newly established Protestant Church of England. His first major job came in one of the surviving cathedrals. Francis Mallett, then dean of Lincoln, had once been Archbishop Cranmer’s chaplain, but after Protestant waverings became one of Queen Mary’s most stridently Catholic chaplains: his continued tenure at ...”

“... hadn’t reported the home visit. James explained that he had no idea whom he should inform. The major took the point, and asked some questions about James’s Party membership. Finally he inquired: ‘Are you for Stalin or for us?’ James truthfully answered: ‘For us, sir.’ ‘Shake on it, old man’ was the reply. ‘For the rest of the war, no ...”