“... These are the ashes of old controversy, and my excuse for raking them over is that doing so may throw light on a tiny fragment of the past which seems to grow in interest even as it begins to slip out of historical focus: that is, what it was like to grow up in the Thirties – in my case, in the late Thirties. I arrived at Westminster School, as a ...”

“... genuine ingredients from Dark Age epic and romance. Nor does it seem improbable that its success may have had some underground influence on other British fiction of the time, however seemingly different. Narrative can make fantasy out of stirring past events, or it can make pseudo-epic. Does J.G. Farrell take the Celtic line in The Siege of Krishnapur, and ...”

“... of the mid-Victorian age.’ Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians was published in May the following year – a revenge, at least in part, on the Victorian values which he blamed for an agonising war. In all this, the Liberals were avenging themselves on the Right, and Strachey’s assaults probably helped to mould, and were certainly ...”

“... official Soviet press. There’s a whiff of the dissertation in Johnston’s Being Soviet: readers may become irritated by the appearance every few pages of the term ‘bricolage’, signifying Soviet citizens’ sensible habit of taking on board only the bits of official propaganda that made sense to them and ignoring the rest. Still, that’s an improvement ...”

“... mind. He is growing into himself. ‘We have a bunch of dandy fellows in our unit,’ he writes in May 1918, ‘and are going to have a wonderful time.’ There has never been a more self-conscious ‘soldier’ in the history of literature. From New York: It was funny yesterday when we donned our uniforms. We put them on yest aft and went to supper and then ...”

“... made widows and their children are made orphans, in order that a few speculative scoundrels … may make unhallowed gains. Naming three vessels recently lost with all hands and two more abandoned by their crews, he asked ‘whether the registered owner of these ships, Edward Bates, is the member for Plymouth, or if it is some other person of the same ...”

“... world so long to fall in love with the books. The second big reason for the success of the series may be adjacent to the point about instability. It concerns magic. The whole issue of magic, in turn, seems to be the principal turn-off (‘elves don’t exist’) for non-readers of fantasy. In Westeros, people agree with that. They don’t believe in magic ...”

“... to it. ‘Images hold the world before us, unwavering, unchanging, fixed before our eyes. But we may look again, and again, seeing and understanding more.’Not long after she signed this contract, Hilda left Hogsthorpe for Australia. In the outback, she met a man called Lance Lakey who became her husband. They had two daughters, Judy and Susan, and Hilda ...”

“... for money or for the cause, arms and ammunition from them. Lt Atlas tells me how he had tried, in May, to organise a mutiny of two brigades and a battalion along with other officers. ‘Everything was ready. But the others didn’t want to go through with it, because they were afraid of being crushed by the air force.’ Here is the real meaning of a no-fly ...”

“... on the Result of Today’s Conference with the State Secretaries concerning Barbarossa’, dated 2 May 1941, just a few weeks before the invasion. It begins: ‘1. The war can only be continued if the entire armed forces are fed from Russia during the third year of the war. 2. As a result, there is no doubt that “x” million people [zig Millionen ...”

“... around outside his house in London for four days until he was taken on. He departed for Dover in May 1767, aged 18. The sea voyage was awful, as it invariably was in the 18th century (there was the seasickness, then the unpleasant possibility of having to land wherever you could if the winds were adverse). Hammond had a ‘spewing fit’ before they were ...”

“... learned Virgins, where, in peace and security, he shall spend the days that remain to him to live. May destiny allow him to complete this habitation, this sweet retreat of his ancestors, which he has devoted to his liberty, his tranquillity and his leisure. At this point Montaigne had published nothing apart from a French translation of the Catalan scholar ...”

“... thousands and evicting them from the land. The more progressive elements in the Congress Party may have believed that with industrialisation and modernisation the problem of caste would solve itself. It never did. Capitalism itself may be caste, colour and gender-blind but the dominant classes utilise these divisions to ...”

“... to an American diplomat, the result ‘astounded the French Cameroonians’. The Anglophones may have feared being ‘swamped’ by the Francophones, but they were also wary of the Igbo ethnic group across the border in the Eastern Region of Nigeria. This mistrust may well have swung the vote. Then, as now, the Igbos ...”

“... abroad with her husband’s sister; Little Reunions, an autobiographical novel, suggests that they may have had a lesbian relationship. Bound feet didn’t prevent Yvonne travelling across continents. She learned oil painting in Paris alongside Xu Beihong (later a master painter of horses), and made friends with his wife and many artists. She skied in the ...”