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“... in Nasser’s case they were willing to go so far as to attempt his assassination. At home, even Labour politicians were willing to see Communists as the principal enemy – hence the scandalous attempt by a committee of right-wing Labour MPs headed by George Brown to get MI5 to spy on their left-wing opponents within the Party in 1961, and ...”

“... Roosevelt riding at its head, followed by a man with a huge US flag. He and his son Kermit sent home, not a modest set of ‘specimens’, but 512 trophies, including nine white rhino (already rare), seven cheetahs, 17 lions and 11 elephants. Even in those days, this tally provoked international uproar. Less remarkable hunters were not exempted from heavy ...”

“... live on earth, to serve as the bondsman of another, of a man with no property, rather than be lord of all the dead who are no more.’ Casey’s book quotes some beautiful Greek and Roman epitaphs, most of them clinging to the fading present, or sceptical of the unrecorded future. This one is Greek: Do not pass by my epitaph, wayfarer, But ...”

“... to Irish nationalist analysis. Thus his new survey of Ireland over the longue durée stresses the home-grown varieties of hatred between various entities within the island and takes pleasure in presenting paradoxical interpretations. But the angle of vision is his own. Faced with the daunting prospect of covering Irish history from the late 18th to the early ...”

“... him to various other forms of secrecy’. He was to become a government spy when Robert Harley was Lord High Treasurer (effectively Prime Minister) and he uses the word ‘secret’ obsessively in Crusoe (it occurs five times on one page). Novak sees his experience of prison and the survival strategies to which it led as crucial to his personality, commenting ...”

“... empire. Hugo Young recalls the ‘patronising astonishment’ with which her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, witnessed this effusive display. Asked by a colleague, on his return, how the visit had really gone, Carrington replied: ‘Oh, very well indeed. She liked the Reagan people very much. They’re so vulgar.’ The story illustrates the major ...”

“... his villain a Labour intellectual who becomes a life peer and bears the transparent soubriquet of Lord Frost. And yet the modern intelligence services owed at one time a considerable debt to the writers of spy stories – in particular to William Le Queux and Phillips Oppenheim. Le Queux’s hero, Duckworth Drew, whose name rhymed with his own and whose ...”

“... of him is adversarial and de haut en bus. But this does not seem to imply wholesale dismissal. The home-truths Thersites delivers about Agamemnon, for example, are similar to, and sometimes taken as a parody of, those which Achilles delivers in Book One, so that the discredit attaching to them may have less to do with their substance, or at least with any ...”

“... It was drizzling just a bit; we were returning by the gully where the black foliage decayed. 23 Home. Its pediments adorned by coats of arms, the massive hall, green glimpses of internal courts. Silence reigned there. There, in the sombre dining hall (described above) dwelt a staff of wizened waiters. A sharp-eyed porter watched the gates. There existed for ...”

“... he found the lifeless remains of his colleague trussed up inside. Brough was delighted. Back home, he inspected every inch of the body and checked it for marks and scratches. He propped it on his knee, smoothed its hair, and gradually settled back into his customary routines. At first he had been rattled, but things could not have worked out better: the ...”

“... Urban Space’, he pits ‘Latino carnivality’ against Anglo anality at every level, including home decor. ‘The glorious sorbet palette of Mexican and Caribbean house paint . . . is perceived as sheer visual terrorism by non-Hispanic homeowners who believe that their equity directly depends upon a neighbourhood colour order of subdued pastels and white ...”

“... reveals that the 10.15 to Leeds has been cancelled (‘operational difficulties’), so we go back home for a cup of tea and come down for the 11.20, with its cheerful conductor who phones Lost Property at Doncaster just to check that it is open even though it’s New Year’s Day. We’re quite cheerful too, having spent a glum couple of days grieving over ...”

“... time equipped with mousy wife and brand-new video camera (the showing of the subsequent holiday home-movie at an end-of-tour reception is, however, the novel’s comic highlight) – and there is the middle-aged couple from Croydon. One day a PhD student utterly at a loss for a thesis topic will light on ‘The Usage of Croydon as a Motif in English ...”

“... for economical exposition in any format and many of the direct quotations from interviews sink home with the incisiveness of sound-bites. Some of this may be little more than off-the-record background bitching, but a number of splendidly tactless remarks are explicitly attributed. There is a particularly revealing section on the social frisson provoked by ...”

“... an oddly memorable poem as ‘The Loss of the Eurydice’ (‘The Eurydice, it concerned thee O Lord’). The trouble is that this colloquialism can collide head-on with decorative ‘decadence’, producing some of Hopkins’s worst efforts, like ‘Harry Ploughman’ or the ‘Echo’ poem. Charles Lock, who wrote a thoughtful study of Hopkins as a ...”