“... some impalpable ‘Mediterranean’ culture. Seen from Pasolini’s lunar perspective, Berlusconi may represent a new sort of power. This, broadly, is the view of Paul Ginsborg, whose book deserves to be read and argued over as widely as possible. For Ginsborg, Berlusconi’s brand of fascism involves creating a way of life centred on the need to acquire ...”

“... regime loyalists, with tribal loyalties to Saddam Hussein, and a second are foreign fighters who may be coming in from Syria.’ The pilots themselves admitted they see few Iraqis and then only from the air. A troop commander said: ‘The men are mostly 5'6"; to 5'10"; tall and are between 150 to 180 pounds. The hardest part is picking out the bad ...”

“... He was a finely ironic self-dramatist, too, scheduling the first trial of Airship No. 2 for 11 May 1899 – the Feast of the Ascension. Paris, unsurprisingly, adored him. In 1901, at the height of his fame, a newspaper described him as the city’s ‘god’, and noted the homophony between his name and those of Porthos and Athos. Milliners created a ...”

“... Africa Pavilion visitors were shown how ostrich feathers were cut from the living bird, which may have reminded oldsters of the days when British geese were stripped, none too humanely, to provide quills. Palestine was not really part of the Empire, but it shared a double-domed pavilion with Cyprus. An item judged worthy of interest to Metrolanders was ...”

“... not be more different from Gosse’s. Personally and intellectually she disliked confrontation. It may be that she had suffered so much from one theoretical view of life that she could never countenance another. Darwinism and its implications, the rock on which Gosse’s father, the author of Evenings at the Microscope, wrecked his scientific career, was a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... at Fisk University in Tennessee, had formed with another woman, and a white woman at that. On 7 May 1930 Larsen wrote to Van Vechten ‘to say that tomorrow I am leaving for Nashville, a dutiful wife going down to visit her husband’. The duties involved pretending that the marriage was still alive, in order to safeguard Elmer’s position at the ...”

“... with them an ‘essential sadness’ never to be surmounted. Exile, however positive its outcomes may seem for those countries generous or opportunistic enough to offer homes to top research scientists and famous writers, is not fun for most of those on whom it is visited. Indeed, extreme and even tragic suffering seems to have been the experience of huge ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... tease Timmy, puffing their privileged backgrounds to make him feel uncomfortable. But his devil-may-care approach on the course stops the whickering of the other boys. Timmy has the natural balance that distinguishes great players – famously, a six-month-old Tiger Woods could stand upright in his father’s hand – and he shows them up as soon as he hits ...”

“... in reforming the country’s decrepit constitutional structure. The prime minister’s behaviour may be thought to be aberrant, but it can’t simply be left out of the calculation. The present regime is slowly destroying the Labour Party, and it will not be rescued by a reasonable competence at day-to-day management – any more than the Conservative Party ...”

“... are only two people in the colonial relationship. But here and there Memmi implies that there may be a third. He hints at this in references to his own biography. Memmi was born into one of those colonial minorities which, by their mere existence, upset the dualism of his theory. Born in the Jewish ghetto of Tunis, to a father of Jewish-Italian origins ...”

“... to say, John and I turned from the deck-rail to walk the very few steps to the saloon doors. John may even have had his hand on the door handle. But then, all at once, the boat tipped: it toppled so sharply towards the water that we both fell and begin sliding back down the smooth, now steeply tilted deck. I felt I was moving fast, as though down an icy ...”

“... to force a rebel’s surrender. If the rebel is subsequently killed or captured, the family may still pay for what he has done, often with their lives. Isa I.’s house was raided by the security forces so often that he eventually suggested they pitch a tent in his backyard. They were looking for a distant relative who had joined the rebels several ...”