“... an ability to suggest situation, in the music of Monteverdi and Cavalli. Such things may have engaged the attentions of librettist and composer: the audiences no doubt were more concerned with the scenic marvels. Such expenses were the cause of theatres going in and out of commission in Venice, but the various syndicates were surely not ...”

“... so improbable indeed that one wonders why they bother to make it. Although landing aircraft may be fractionally quieter than in the past, the difference is not apparent to the naked ear; so we have aircraft making the same noise as before, except that there are now a great many more of them. BAA’s claim that Terminal Five would produce relatively few ...”

“... from across dangerous places, the deep ditch of a sunk fence, etc – so that the children may destroy themselves, lose themselves, by responding, by getting into their power. So long as the children are kept from them, they are not lost; but they try and try, these evil presences, to get hold of them. It is a question of the children “coming over to ...”

“... handle by EMI) and repackage them as something as cosily British as Benny Hill. At some point, we may be sure, the Monarch will be called on to honour the entrepreneur who gave us (to his own considerable enrichment) Johnny Rotten’s ‘God Save the Queen’ (‘She ain’t no human being’). Branson’s sanitising touch has been used to more worthy effect ...”

“... an armoured scythe towards Singapore.’ The blurb-writer has got his campaign wrong. That was May 1940, in France and Belgium, when the opponents were German. The Japanese forces landed in Malaya were considerably smaller than the Allied armies facing them, but under the redoubtable General Yamashita (hanged in 1948 for war crimes), they knew what to do ...”

“... and later as a special military adviser to Boris Yeltsin. But revealing though these materials may have been, Lenin’s flaws were hardly invisible before access became possible. Volkogonov is quite candid about the main reason for his and others’ loss of faith in Lenin. ‘We began to doubt his infallibility above all because the “cause” which he ...”

“... articles for German publications, which helped him gain entry to German rightwing circles. He may have met Hitler in Berlin at the time of the brief Kapp Putsch in March 1920. But the evidence is tainted because a report by Hitler on his visit to Berlin at that time – one used by German historians – could be a forgery by the same man who perpetrated ...”

“... upon which, indeed, the whole metrical system, as Russom understands it, rests. His book may be criticised for confining itself largely to the evidence of Beowulf, and perhaps for questionable handling of ‘extrametrical syllables’. Yet his ‘coherent rule system’ is just that, and it will certainly have to be taken fully into account by all ...”

“... which Alexander exercised over his. It is a bizarre quartet, over the choice of which eyebrows may be raised. Where are the traditional Great Captains – Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, Gustavus Adolphus, Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Moltke, even Montgomery or MacArthur? There seems something almost perverse in Keegan’s deliberate avoidance of ...”

“... of former colleagues around to point out mis-statements or lacunae. Mind you, this convention may be changing: one can imagine the kind of history of the Times of the 1980s Rupert Murdoch would be likely to commission, or pass. It is hard to see him frightened by the prospect of hostile reviews: ‘Murdoch Loses Sleep over Bias ...”

“... to the collection, White locates the main problem in a development which his own earlier Writings may, ironically, have helped to accentuate: this is the modern historian’s withdrawal of confidence in the protocol of narrative. ‘Many modern historians,’ he writes, ‘hold that narrative discourse, far from being a neutral medium for the representation ...”

“... city’. Nothing is spared her wrath. She says the Cambodian people cannot have confidence in the May 1993 elections because the country was not entirely free of political murders. She gets many small and large details wrong, from calling a key American representative a senator to claiming that opening up Cambodia to the outside world only ‘serves ...”

“... gets sent to Berlin, as a veteran flag-waver representing Limbach, for the Deutschlandtreffen of May 1939. He is driven up in a propaganda truck ‘like a beribboned ox to the gate’ (Grandmother). The outcome is unexpected. Once in Berlin, he can’t resist going to a really big cinema, the Gloria Palais. By the time he gets to the rally his flag has ...”

“... persons) of colour’, but, as Gates predicts, the original ‘coloured people’ may well make a return, if coined in the correct quarters. In any case, Gates introduces himself as not ‘Everynegro’: I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time – but to do so in order to ...”

“... editors and place and date of publication, however, we have to work back to a note on page 163. It may seem trifling to mention this in a work of such outstanding erudition but Goldthwaite makes very big claims which need to be carefully checked. We read, for example, that at the beginning of the 16th century the raw materials imported into Italy from the ...”