“... of these books combine to remind us of the role of economic development in our history, and force home the fact that there can be no true separation of economic history from other histories. The dates bounding the Checklands’ volume in the New History of Scotland might seem to be ones of political significance primarily, but 1832 and 1914 mark very nearly ...”

“... death, have seen my eldest daughter fading day by day, and to crown all have had my husband come home half-killed, to need constant tendance for six weeks, and during that time was myself suffering from a painful disease joined to the consciousness that I was ‘breaking down’. – I wrote my last monthly instalment for Cassell’s with vinegar to my head ...”

“... in a car who worked on the next farm and I was told quite severely that I would be given a lift home. I had to finish the ice cream in a rush. When I went out in the street and got into the unfamiliar car, the man said he’d seen Bella on the road and we’d stop and pick her up on the way back. He seemed very angry. And when we found Bella, who’d hardly ...”

“... he was swallowed by the whale, and other curious matters of science and antiquity. Their first home was a furnished bungalow on the outskirts of Croaking, quite convenient to James’s anodised-aluminium university and just downwind of a farting refinery belonging to the Department of Cleansing and Pollution, which is one agency of government whose right ...”

“... amount of money had been paid for his transfer from Philadelphia. If he tells me that story about Lord Booby and the Duke’s daughter once more, I thought, I shall scream like a mad vicar. Not really listening to him, I examined his body and clothing, seeking clues. He had an unusual face: some said he was an Albino Negro, but I thought him too pale for ...”

“... black sweaters and tight jeans, watching the furious activity and dialogue, and then went home to read Being and Nothingness (or perhaps just its popularisation in Colin Wilson’s The Outsider). And maybe, later on, it was Marlowe and Spade who gave us the courage and foolheadedness to take to the streets. We were young and had energy to expend, so ...”

“... It was evident that she was embarrassed, and all the more so when I showed her ‘the little Lord Jesus’ that I had lifted off the arms of the Virgin Mary on a small musical box, presumably (in this atheist household) borrowed from nursery school. The police officers laid out what they had found: the official history of the Soviet Communist ...”

“... just for us), and then by the way the literary journalism overreaches itself when it touches home base. It’s a pity that James, who can talk with such trenchancy and sense about everything from Mandelstam to Martin Amis, makes such a fool of himself (and of us) when he touches on the literature of his birthplace. His recent overview of Australian ...”

“... of witnesses and the rigging of a High Court jury, exposed the complete dependence of the Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees on the ‘advice’ of comical yet sinister reactionaries in the security underworld – forces that had demonstrated many times that they did not care about election results and did not care for election results that returned non-Tory ...”

“... from Austria. The other woman was a Londoner, Muriel Eady, who had grown up in a children’s home after her mother died in the flu epidemic of 1918. A femur belonging to one of the women, dug up by the Christies’ dog, Judy, was being used to prop up a fence.The story of the six bodies was of instant sensational interest to the prim but prurient 1950s ...”

“... next day in Birmingham. The five were taken to Morecambe police station where Dr Frank Skuse, a Home Office forensic scientist, tested their hands for evidence of contact with explosives. Meanwhile a posse of detectives from the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad headed up the motorway to interview the suspects. In Morecambe Skuse conducted a Griess ...”

“... On 26 September​ 1849 the lord mayor of London, Sir James Duke, laid the foundation stone for the new City House of Correction at Holloway. The land had been intended for use as a burial ground for victims of the recent cholera epidemic, but the epidemic had subsided, and the anticipated dead had not arrived. ‘May God preserve the City of London/And make this place a terror to evil-doers,’ the foundation stone read ...”

“... becoming a land-owning capitalist class ready to collaborate with the colonial power and join the Home Guard, thus sharpening African resistance to British rule on the whetstone of class struggle; whereas Ndebele protests were articulated by compromised chiefs and soft men of substance incapable of leading an armed insurrection. Nevertheless, Ranger finds the ...”

“... change of temper may be that, whereas in 1969 he could half-hint at a coming upsurge in favour of Home Rule, he now writes in the aftermath of the abortive referendum of 1979. He extols the belief, partly inherited from the Enlightenment, which he finds in Scottish radicalism down to the 1920s: that ‘by the exercise of political will, the people hold their ...”

“... and a year later he died, aged 36. Soon afterwards, my mother went to the restaurant to bring home the Bonhomme Richard. The new owner said she could have it if she paid him what she thought it was worth. It was a trap. Newly widowed, she did not have what she knew it was worth, yet to offer less would diminish my father’s work. She tossed her head and ...”