“... changed character. ‘Please give me your telephone number. My teeth clashed horribly. I may have whiplash.’ The young man stood grinning idiotically. The English couple seated next to her tried to help. I guessed that they had also been to the wedding. When the young man refused to divulge his number, the middle-aged Englishwoman rang the bell for ...”

“... is that her donning of an ethnic identity in multicultural Australia was not innocent. It may be funny when we learn that this Anglo-Saxon girl forced her publisher to dance a Ukrainian folk dance with her after she won the Miles Franklin Award: it is not funny that someone taking a Ukrainian identity should use it to claim that most of her family had ...”

“... Lee Jones is good as usual (I can’t imagine him as Al Gore’s roommate in college, try as I may, but so he was) and Jessica Lange gives the performance of her lifetime. When people could get to this picture, they loved it and rewarded it. So there is an unslaked demand for quality ‘out there’. Hoop Dreams, the documentary which created a huge fuss ...”

“... Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Academic Questions. Lefkowitz admits that she may have biases but argues that this is very different from ‘consciously setting out to achieve a particular political goal’. Ten years ago, she would have been able to avoid any charge of bias, because she, and those who think like her, held hegemonic power ...”

“... would hand it to me slice by slice, each slice gripped firmly under that broad black thumb.’ It may have been something to do with this, but I didn’t mind about missing out on a full Wigan breakfast: we wanted to film the Liverpool pickets as the men who had taken over their work drove past them and through the dock gates at the start of their shift. My ...”

“... 1865, Ohaihai of Hanetetuua cooked in Atuona; 4 January 1866, Houpo of Haamau cooked in Atuona; 25 May 1866, Pehitumoe of Haamau eaten by Atuona. Then there were the killings without the ‘cooking’: of women by men, men by women, mothers by sons, sons by fathers, infants by adults, young by old, old by young. The death throes of the valley of Atuona were ...”

“... ideal of the universal man was not yet dead in Bernini’s Rome, as the example of Bernini himself may remind us, a sculptor and architect who was also capable of writing a play for Carnival and staging it in a theatre of his own design. Come to that, Orazio Grassi was something of a universal man, a major architect, as Redondi points out, as well as an ...”

“... of West’s long-dead 19th-century fiancée. (So that’s all right then.) Much may have changed in these 113 years, but Dr Leete’s formal suit is still much the same (correct). The ladies still withdraw after dinner (off-target). Leete still offers his guest a courteous cigar – ‘Do you smoke?’ – while beginning his explanations ...”

“... the instructor said something at the beginning about women having an aptitude for the form. That may have made the men feel more inclined to assert themselves. There was one who seemed to take a bit of interest in me. At least he always smiled at me after he said anything, as if I was the one who could get what he meant. When I smiled back I tried to convey ...”

“... the answer is simple – in regard to our mother, at least.’ (In regard to all the others, it may be unbearably complex.) ‘There is documentation; and the documentation is unlikely to have been faked.’ Unlikely, but not improbable. Raising the unwanted child of a sister, or a daughter, as one’s own is not uncommon among working-class families, often ...”

“... because of this, their chances in America were severely circumscribed. Whatever their prospects may have been, they complained loudly, and not a few begged for harsh corporal punishment, even for death, instead of being sent to the Colonies. Ekirch might have depicted these people as primitive bandits resisting the oppressive forces of capitalism. He wisely ...”

“... Bid Me to Live (1960), and as Robert Cunningham in D.H. Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod (1922), he may have had the misfortune to furnish the model for Sir Clifford Chatterley. Aldington’s maledictory novel, Death of a Hero, has not worn well. The parents of George, the ‘hero’, are parodic monsters. The wife, Elizabeth, and the mistress, Fanny, are the ...”

“... jabber of rival histories that will baffle the uninitiated. The many contributions from Bannister may puzzle, too. As BBC controllers go, he comes across as informal and open-minded – a dimpled prodigy from local radio. But his dialect is still jargon: ‘The important thing was to consolidate the management team.’ Whole pages of the book are given over ...”

“... breaking-up of monopolies – a dangerous, even totalitarian form of collectivism. The Cold War may have undermined the idea of the state as a regulator of capitalism, but it gave a powerful impetus to the creation of a ‘national security state’: ‘entrenched, constantly expanding and largely invulnerable to political attacks; a state that forged ...”

“... guests who threw corn-ears at the bridal pair (no confetti, please), and all who made ‘rather a May game of marriage, than a holy institution of God’. William Gouge, a London minister, was a little more relaxed: in 1622 he allowed ‘all those lawful customs that are used for the setting forth of the outward solemnity thereof, as meeting of ...”