“... answer. Much better, a policeman explained to a note-maker, that a child fetches her father home from the pub for his dinner than her mother, who might stop to down a pint. In a street of housebreakers around Bethnal Green another bobby explained what a ‘fence’ for stolen goods was; Booth, clearly unfamiliar with Cockney rhyming slang, was puzzled ...”

“... tried on bardic robes. Ossian’s first major rivals, predictably enough, came from close to home. They were Robert Burns and William Shakespeare. It was partly in response to Ossianmania that Shakespeare came to be hailed as a bard (he had already come to be thought of as the national poet). The first American edition of Shakespeare, published in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... who had deserted her. Spending so much time in school sanatoriums and lacking strong guidance from home seems to have encouraged a streak of loneliness that came out later in extravagant sociability on the one hand and a fierce intellectual independence on the other. Several of his friends noted that underneath the vivid social personality, Lambert – like ...”