“... to see war at first hand, strolled into the trenches and found himself crouching alongside the king, who was furious to encounter him there. As Macaulay writes in his History of England,‘Mr Godfrey, you ought not to run these hazards, you are not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here.’ ‘Sir,’ answered Godfrey, ‘I run no more hazards than ...”

“... From within a few weeks of its opening in May 1956, it’s been accepted that John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger ushered in a theatrical revolution. Launching both the Angry Young Man and kitchen-sink drama, the play is held to have had a devastating and irreversible impact on a postwar theatre scene dominated by winsome drawing-room comedies and witless country-house whodunnits ...”

“... refugees who had settled in America almost unanimously rejected the revolution and fought for the king who had crushed them at Culloden. How was that possible? Some say that Jacobitism was always blindly authoritarian. Devine, on the other hand, suggests ‘rampant commercialism’ on the part of the clan chiefs, who simply harvested their dependants and sold ...”

“... beside her on the bed. Esther before Ahasuerus (c.1628-30) is pure theatre, depicting the Persian king anachronistically decked out in full commedia dell’arte costume and framed by a red stage curtain; the fainting Esther is washed out not only by her days of fasting but also by the riot of colour that surrounds her. A similar stage curtain appears in ...”

“... a composite image of action shots of the star players, with Michel Platini – the undisputed king of European football – in pride of place. Everyone (well, almost everyone) had the Panini sticker album and was blowing all their pocket money trying to complete it. There was a lot of pre-tournament interest in the South Korean team – they’d qualified ...”

“... Duke of Gloucester, who represented George V at the coronation) had bowed before the Black king. ‘We of the black race are now free.’ Haile Selassie was, he said, the Black Messiah. Events unfolded from this point in a way that becomes familiar as Subin’s book goes on.Howell was imprisoned by the colonial authorities and while detained wrote The ...”

“... revolutionists with a schema. The pervasive influence of Country publicists like Thomas Gordon, John Trenchard, Bolingbroke and Benjamin Hoadly on colonial pamphleteers is now taken for granted. American historians have tested Bailyn’s thesis by extending and particularising it. This is what T.H. Breen has done in Tobacco Culture. The impact of Country ...”

“... hinged double set, trying to throw the baby Jesus across the intervening frame at the kneeling king on the left? And why was I supposed to care about the mustard-coloured pot on the mustard-coloured table with the mustard-coloured dead sunflowers in it? Pictures were another matter. You could imagine living with pictures; my parents’ house had pictures ...”

“... E.D. Morel against conditions in the Congo Free State, run as a personal fiefdom by King Leopold II of Belgium. Casement was soon sent to investigate the situation in Congo itself, leading him to produce the report that would make him famous (before his championing of the cause of Irish independence led to his execution for treason). The abuses ...”

“... The pub has become as much a restaurant as it is a place to have a drink. It is owned by Greene King, the brewing company, and run by a Polish woman who lives upstairs. It is full most evenings: customers smoking cigarettes stand on the pavement. One of the barmen is from Stettin – ‘Paris of the Baltic’, as he likes to say – and studied politics at ...”

“... to deal with miscarriages of justice. It noted the criticism of the Home Office made by Sir John May, who led an inquiry into the cases of the Guildford Four and also the Maguire Seven, whose convictions were quashed in June 1991. May wrote that the Home Office’s ‘approach … was throughout reactive, it was never thought proper for the department ...”

“... took him for a cattle rustler, whipped him and chased him away. Fridolin complained to Clovis, king of the Franks, and returned with a signed charter granting him the island, as well as two messengers who threatened any dissenters with immediate execution.Fridolin established a nunnery, but he needed funding for the abbey. Things seemed to look up when ...”

“... and, asked this question, their spokesman replied, to general applause: ‘MacDonalds, Burger King and American TV’. But perhaps some others long for gourmet restaurants, Krug Cabernet Sauvignon ’74, and musak in Orange County; or, altogether more understandably, Sunday brunch at the Clift in San Francisco. The trams are not running in that city, but ...”

“... If a comparison is wanted I should describe myself as the Marriott of the 20th century. Sir John Marriott wrote textbooks of 19th and 20th-century history. They are fairly competent and duller than mine but they enabled me to pass examinations. Marriott was also Conservative MP for York, hence a more successful politician. He was slightly to the right ...”

“... frightfully useful contacts; and it wasn’t his fault, though he knew he ought to be fighting the King. You understand, I am puzzling about what was at the back of his mind when he wrote these few extremely magical poems.’ The insistence that even the most magical of poems is susceptible to rational analysis sits quite comfortably with an unanalysed taste ...”