“... Bey had put into his work a pack of easily exposed lies about himself. However self-deluded he may have been, he must have known in some fugitive part of himself that his enemies would not fail to hold him up to ridicule for these claims. Hence the portentousness of so much of what he writes, its insistent knowingness, the lordly airs he puts on, the ...”

“... biggest names in sport and entertainment were conjoined in a seemingly ridiculous match. ‘They may have been the only two people in the country, at that moment, who could understand each other,’ Cramer explains. On their honeymoon he shared her with about 100,000 GIs in front of whom she appeared in Korea. ‘Joe, you never heard such cheering,’ she ...”

“... the crematorium on order from the firm of J.A. Topf and Sons. Hitler was not present at Wannsee, may not even have known about it. But as Kershaw shows, he did not need to be there. He sanctioned every step of the descent into genocide; his talk was heavy with references to ‘extermination’ and ‘annihilation’, and he could tell SS leaders to come up ...”

“... On a May night in 1936, I saw that mightiest of zeppelins, the Hindenburg, floating above the skyscrapers of New York – a leviathan nearly as long as the Titanic, and as ill-starred. If Dr Goebbels had had his way the Hindenburg would have been called the ‘Hitler’ and would have borne an enormous swastika on its side, but Hugo Eckener, the man who gave substance to the dream of Count Zeppelin, was tough enough to face down the Nazi spin doctor when honour demanded ...”

“... even inducing Egan to recite ‘poetry – was it?’ containing such lines as ‘The snake may be kind, we cannot know. Even our gentlest kill them with/Expedition, the automatic twelve-gauge shotgun.’ There’s also Dr Harvard, a more appropriately aged suitor who pines helplessly over Melanie Wooten. And across the lake, ignored by all, the insane ...”

“... recidivism and squandered mercy are dismayingly mixed, though today’s inner-city care workers may find the basic elements of the tale familiar. It comes not from the War Cry but mainly from the voluminous diaries of Constance Maynard, a ‘social-purity activist’ and headmistress of Westfield College, founded to guide young women in Christian ...”

“... that comes from disbelief, and perhaps his love pursuits were similarly energised. O’Gorman may have been intending to pursue some fancy thesis of this kind, but in the end he despaired of his attempts to ‘find a way to deal with this erotic element’ – indeed, the poet’s widow threatened to sue him if he kept on trying. His biography of Tate ...”

“... her annotated with comments in Churchill’s handwriting, though she is warned that his judgment may no longer be reliable. She lives on a boat on the Thames and constantly worries that she might inadvertently sink it. All this is related with a degree of amusement but one of the funniest sections in the book begins when, at the age of 22, an unplanned ...”

“... or the West Indies); that Charlemagne had a flowing white beard and cared about education (but he may have been most popular because his coronation date, 800, was so easy to remember); that Philip Augustus was a good king because he beat the Germans; that Catherine de Médicis was a bad woman because she killed so many Protestants; that Henri IV wanted every ...”

“... He tells me he already has three new books finished and ready for publication. One, a novel, may be called ‘Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton’ (Home is not a fan of George Orwell), and samples passages from classic London literature, reworked to make each paragraph exactly 100 words long. Another is called ‘Memphis Underground’, and is set in ...”

“... work in my grandfather’s office, and exercising her sharp tongue on her sisters. My father may have thought he was liberating my mother by their marriage, but actually it was Ishie who got the best of the deal. To meet a man who was a socialist, an atheist, an intellectual, and charming to boot – this is the way she must have told me the story ...”

“... its true name is the rule of the mob … Heaven help those who by expressing republican sentiment may provoke the rage of the mob.’ The warehouses on the Queens waterfront and on the empty streets leading away from the East River will eventually be torn down and yet another real-estate company will publish brochures for apartments with views of Manhattan ...”

“... to interview his subject and try to talk the truth out of him. But even what Macintyre tells us may be only a partial version. Chapman certainly believed for quite a time that Germany was likely to win the war and at one stage was actually training German agents for espionage and sabotage missions against Britain. There is no doubt whatever that if Germany ...”

“... sentimental hospital offers something to the human mind in pain or despair which the scientific may not be able to do, and the scientific sometimes fails by reason of its own dogmas.’ Yonda was an example of good management, but this has its dangers. Could Greene have foreseen the drift towards a faceless world of cost-effectiveness, where cure is a ...”

“... ships’ lagging, dust from dry walls – has also thickened the lining around his lungs and may be partly responsible for his condition. Two of his old workmates died of asbestosis. Yesterday I went up to the blood clinic with him. He doesn’t want a chaperone but can get dizzy and forgetful. My mother has arthritis in her hips, and is all but ...”