“... than theoretical ground. The back cover suggests that it can be read as a guide to ‘upper-class’ life. But this is misleading. As the text itself makes clear, Henry and Caroline are not, and are not about to become, either owners or controllers of any significant proportion of the means of production. Sloane Rangers are the subalterns and field ...”

“... strong impression of the waste in their lives, and of the waste in the lives of Victorian middle-class women in general, that made up his earliest memories of family life. Carpenter then went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1864, straight to the heart of the Broad Church network, and eventually to a fellowship in that college, newly relinquished by Leslie ...”

“... advantage of the stronger, dominant group in society. Consider the facts. In each city the ruling class – which could be many individuals in a democracy, a few oligarchs, or a single tyrant – has fixed the laws to serve its own interests. The rest of us, if we obey these laws as justice requires, are simply profiting the rulers. And profiting them means ...”

“... is a long time ago. ‘Oligarch’ is now no more than a loose social designation, like ‘upper class’ or ‘old money’. It does not help much in locating political power, though a number of ‘oligarchs’ are active in politics. Is this not finessing? Is the country in some fundamental sense not run even now by the high bourgeoisie? The term clase ...”

“... like that of Leslie Stephen only more so, since he was rather better-off. They were upper-middle-class intellectuals, though they might not have called themselves so, and in their day that status ensured an unusual degree of both comfort and influence. From Ann Thwaite’s biography of Gosse one remembers the remarkable moment when Gosse passed a note to ...”

“... and Pickett admit, ‘there is a strong social gradient in imprisonment, with people of lower class, income and education much more likely to be sent to prison than people higher up the social scale.’ The US imprisons great swathes of its poor, black population. It doesn’t follow from this that almost everyone is worse off than they would be under a ...”

“... Fox’s articles in the Sunday Times and the New Review saw in it the ‘whole waterlogged English class system’ sinking under its own weight. But the system has proved remarkably buoyant. Old Etonians and alumni of the Bullingdon Club continue to thrive. By contrast their antagonists of forty years ago, the police and the press, have fared less well. This ...”

“... There​ can scarcely be a subject about which more books have been written than the Second World War, and yet surprisingly few of them risk a synthesis of the whole. Many writers refer to the war in their titles, but their subjects are usually only a part of the whole: a campaign, a geographical area, a single country or, very often, a single armed service ...”

“... rest easily in their graves. It has proved more difficult to kill off Prussia in the mind. Post-war historians in the Federal Republic were soon busy rehabilitating the Borussian state. Influential figures like Gerhard Ritter insisted that the main line of Prussian history had nothing to do with the Third Reich: the aristocratic plotters of July 1944 ...”

“... politicians, baseball-players – may be a sign of weakness. On the other hand, an upper-class white woman – member of ‘a very specialised herd’ – explains that white Southerners also have their specialised insecurities; she laments the gifted uneducated women of her generation, now hard drinkers or even insane. Down on their luck, white ...”

“... Feminism for the Americas. Mona Siegel’s book begins shortly after the end of the First World War, when hopes for peace and reconstruction were high. President Wilson’s speech on the rights of nations and peoples seemed to promise that small nation-states and imperial territories could look forward to self-determination. Women, many of whom had been ...”

“... to Europe.In both​ Screech’s and Stanley’s portraits, Edo is a world city – not just world-class in size but connected to world trends and events. This perspective accords with the current generation of writing on the Tokugawa policy of sakoku. Scholars once viewed Japan’s closure as absolute, draconian and costly to its people. Watsuji Tetsurō’s ...”

“... crushed the peasants led by Müntzer in one of the last battles of the German Peasants’ War. Müntzer was captured, tortured – confessing his heretical belief that ‘omnia sunt communia,’ ‘everything belongs to everybody’ – and beheaded. Our man narrowly escapes, and in the woods outside Frankenhausen sheds his first blood, killing three ...”

“... from socialist revolution. Severe stresses and tensions remained, but the clear trend before the war was towards co-operation and integration.’ This had been made possible by reforms going back to the 1860s. After the serfs were emancipated in 1861, the government set up zemstvos, elective local government assemblies; it created independent law courts; it ...”

“... to acknowledge that he had been elected to implement a socialist programme. In our own era of post-class politics, this may sound grandiloquent and out of place, but at the time it seemed natural. Many books have been written in French about Mitterrand, but only half a dozen in English; this impressive biography by Philip Short, a BBC correspondent in Paris in ...”