“... the feminists of ‘the condom train’ staged a mass importation of illegal contraceptives in May 1971. When they arrived from Belfast into Connolly Station, the customs men ‘were mortified’, Mary Kenny, one of the participants, remembered, ‘and quickly conceded they could not arrest all of us, and let us through’. Michael Adams writes in his 1968 ...”

“... strong presence in the state apparatus and their extended patronage network in the provinces may be the only way to prevent the Brotherhood from winning another election. To avoid being outflanked, the Muslim Brotherhood has to find a way of driving a wedge between the old regime and the revolutionaries. Confrontation has failed, and divide-and-rule ...”

“... he admitted that he had been starved of affection as a child’. Wheatcroft suggests that this may have informed his ‘savage public personality, by contrast with a private man who … was genial and generous’. Perhaps. Waugh exhibited that mixture of pride and resentment towards ‘Evelyn Waugh’, as he referred to him, that the sons of overpowering ...”

“... a little better they wouldn’t have bustled about the world appropriating things. A gentleman may make a large fortune, but only a cad can look after it. It would have been so much pleasanter to live in a small community who knew Greek and played games and washed themselves.Buchan couldn’t rise to quite this level of effortless superiority. After ...”

“... worst one … Do not revile your fate. Remember that it is sad to be alone; despite anything that may be said or done, a woman has an immense need for affection.’ Berthe now required a new chaperone; her mother inherited the job. Berthe didn’t just need her when painting outdoors, she also needed her when being painted indoors. Manet was to make a dozen ...”

“... three times. He was also extremely good-looking. That much we probably knew, more or less. What may come as a surprise is that he had been appointed equerry to King George as early as 1944, when Margaret was only 14. By then, he had a wife, Rosemary, and a small son. Margaret said, much later, that she really fell in love with him in 1947 when he ...”

“... She turns back. ‘Murdered?’ she says. The ending is in this beginning. She registers that he may be a killer. Does she believe in his innocence? Not necessarily. Can she handle him? Perhaps. Or can she not handle him – and does that make him her kind of guy? She continues to respond, undaunted. ‘Were you interested in Mr Steele because he’s a ...”

“... businessman whose brushes with manorial justice were practically routine. His mother’s name may have been Katherine, and her origins can be traced with some close detective work to the Meverell family of the Staffordshire Peaks. The mature Cromwell looked back to his own wild youth, ‘as he himself was wont oftentimes to declare unto Cranmer Archbishop ...”

“... as Labour leader in 2015 and the resignation of David Cameron the following summer. (Theresa May initially hoped to refocus on ‘JAMs’ – Just About Managing families – but lost all ideological confidence along with her parliamentary majority in June last year.) The phrase was used as a way of signalling economic and moral commitment at the same ...”

“... documents from centres where … scholars are apt to look for and expect them in the future, we may be doing a disservice.’ When his team reached nearby Bonn, he was relieved to find that Allied military government was in place and imposing order. ‘The period of the snatch is therefore past.’*Max Loeb, a German-born book-dealer, took the 30,000 ...”

“... so is the duty to pay the owner for the use or acquisition of their property.In retrospect, it may seem that, despite their origins, neither development was particularly revolutionary. Hannah Arendt thought Robespierre was Marx’s ‘teacher in revolution’, but on the question of property, at least, the French revolutionaries were far from being ...”

“... of a tidy, well-organised life in these pages, a life of kisses bestowed or of novels written, may be surprised. My book and my life are written in fits, more like epilepsy than like a narrative.’ Bad analogy, and a tad tasteless. Epileptic seizures are uninvited. Moody’s fits were self-induced. Early in The Black Veil, Moody mentions his father ...”

“... It leaves one thinking about what might have been in China, and fearing that such an opportunity may never come again. Modern political life has existed there only briefly, in the first part of the 20th century, when there were small-scale (but important) student protests and strikes as well as elections, independent newspapers and universities and many ...”

“... the man who is widely considered the greatest writer in history. The best insight into who he was may lie in the parrot perched before you, a tenth-generation descendant of the parrot given to Shakespeare in 1610 as a gift by his friend and fellow poet Michael Drayton. The Bard was exceedingly fond of the bird, and would speak to her as one might write in a ...”

“... have come close to being selected for England’s test team (though Middlesex’s Owais Shah may get the call-up for this winter’s tour to Pakistan). Is there any other sport in which black players, having overcome years of prejudice and contempt to make the breakthrough to international representation in the 1980s, have gradually been frozen out ...”