“... and libricini), which he had used as source material: ten of these are lost. Some of them may yet surface: two entire notebooks were discovered by chance, in Madrid, as recently as 1967, and there have been tantalising but unconfirmed sightings of the lost treatise on light and shade known to Melzi as ‘Libro W’. The collections are ...”

“... standard of sexual conduct than their sisters elsewhere? It is hard to tell. Marsh’s descendants may have censored her journal. Certainly, she let no romantic opportunity pass. The tablecloth spread as usual on the grass, cold fowl and oysters were our repast – sung some songs, danced a reel, and again seated ourselves in our palanquins – the moon was ...”

“... the assistance of the occupation, for which Bush and Blair wanted backdated cover from the UN. In May, at Annan’s urging, the Security Council ratified the Anglo-American seizure of Iraq, voting unanimously for Resolution 1483, which endorsed Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority, and pledged the UN to play a ‘vital role’, as requested by the White ...”

“... saw, bin Laden attacked the homeland on 11 September 2001 – burying a few thousand of us. He may yet bury more. We, of course, are sending his kind to their graves in Afghanistan, Iraq and other corners of the Islamic patrimony. Osama’s is a two-theatre war: one on the battlefield, the other on the airwaves. For a guy on the run, he is not doing ...”

“... In any case, the relationship with Murray had begun to sour. Money was part of the problem. Byron may have begun his career refusing to take any when Murray repeatedly pressed him, but that didn’t last. Their first real fight occurred when Byron offered to pass along to the meddlesome Dallas the value of one of his copyrights, and Murray balked at paying a ...”

“... Ages, ‘some variation of race spread through European languages like wildfire.’ The word may have emerged to describe breeds of animal, but it was soon used to describe people: in Italy, Cooley writes, ‘everything that was bred had a race, and everything had been bred.’In pre-modern Europe, certain species were vested with symbolic ...”

“... endorsed by the General Assembly that November, but fighting broke out immediately and worsened in May 1948, when the mandate ended. It was at this point that Lie sent Bernadotte and Bunche to force an agreement. When Bernadotte was murdered Bunche was ‘trapped’, as he told Ruth. No one wanted responsibility but everyone had a view. That November, speaking ...”

“... he had used when publishing his earliest poems: Incertus. How far back this mindset went we may never know, because, if Reid is correct, Heaney’s childhood letters have been lost. It is already visible in the opening letter of this selection, written to his schoolfriend Seamus Deane in December 1964, when they were in their mid-twenties. ‘Christmas ...”

“... braving attack and disease to deliver the mail; everyone knows his news will be fresh. It may make fortunes or portend disaster. Money is already changing hands: people love to bet on the news.In early modern Europe, couriers represented the increased connectivity of the Continent. They travelled faster and faster on roads that were constantly ...”

“... and donated it to her friend Virginia Durr’s campaign against the poll tax. Their meeting may, Kaplan suggests, have been behind Churchill’s noticeable gloom that Christmas and his ‘retreat into silence’ at the White House dinner. In 1945, Tom Mitford was killed in action at the age of 36. Decca wrote to her mother that she ‘couldn’t think ...”

“... gave him some problems after the war. He was denied a visa to enter the United States in May 1955, at the height of the anti-Communist hysteria. (The public rebuke came just as Oppenheimer was being interrogated by the Atomic Energy Commission’s personnel security board, although Oppenheimer’s case was secret at the time.) Nearly two decades ...”

“... guns to the platform on the flying bridge of the ship. Writing as Ryko, the hard-drinking, devil-may-care merchant seaman, liberates Kerouac’s sense of humour, which is good-natured, almost puppy-like, especially when compared with Burroughs’s relentlessly sardonic deadpan. He is particularly amusing in the scenes with Ryko and his ...”

“... provides an explanation (when Tassie overhears both sides of a critical phone conversation, it may be because ‘Sarah was a little deaf and had the volume on everything turned up high’), but the effect is of seams showing, as if the story has gone beyond the scope of the person telling it. There is nothing romanticised about this adoption, almost as if ...”

“... a brilliant tour de force, in which two dystopias and a utopia were ingeniously intertwined. What may now surprise us is that Atwood has decided to go on living in that universe, which, however, did not have a to-be-continued sign attached to it. The wonderful cliffhanger of the earlier novel is thereby somewhat spoiled (we need a technical term for this ...”

“... mixture of Latin, Italianised and Anglicised toponyms. Classicists and ancient history buffs, who may hitherto have found the world of late antiquity too exotically un-classical to consider, will be in for an agreeable surprise: Traina’s fifth century should seem just familiar enough to navigate easily, but also enough of a trial run for the Middle Ages to ...”