“... microscope, he carved and painted sculptures measurable in microns and millimetres; his Pope John Paul IIholds a cross crafted from a hair divided into sixths, making its width slightly less than the diameter of two red blood cells. His portrait of Little Red Riding Hood, whose diminutive has never been so well-deserved, features a mere speck of a girl ...”

“... could only survive by remaining in the shadows. Isis, by contrast, has been able to move through north-east Syria and large parts of northern Iraq with almost complete freedom. There has always been a strand of Islam with global aspirations rising above national frontiers: the Islamic State now aims to put those ideas into practice. One of the caliph’s ...”

“... them into his mouth … and washing each mouthful down with prodigious gulps of liquor.’ In true John Belushi fashion, Guthrie proceeded to steal the hostess’s onyx and gold cigarette-holder and attempted to make off with the money that had been collected, pouring the coins inside his shirt. ‘Somebody shoot at me,’ he said. ‘You cain’t hit me ...”

“... nothing to the French defeat he immediately demanded that Italy be allowed to occupy France as far north as the Rhône valley, to annex Nice, Corsica, Tunisia and Djibouti, and to take over the French navy and air force. Hitler had other ideas: he wanted a lenient peace treaty in order to bolster Pétain’s position. The tougher the terms imposed on ...”

“... Americans, is close to hero-worship, treats FDR’s endless deceptions and tricks with indulgence. John Steinbeck, whom FDR once persuaded to do some spying for him in Mexico, came to the conclusion that he liked mystery, subterfuge and indirect tactics for their own sake. But maybe, like many privileged people, he didn’t see why the world shouldn’t be ...”

“... against France. Howard shows that France was suspicious of British and American designs on French North Africa and Madagascar too. France faced nationalist resistance in all these places, but consistently imagined that the resistance was being fomented by London and Washington. Howard says nothing about Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, which was taken by ...”

“... not far from the President’s House, the third presidential mansion, where George Washington and John Adams lived, and a tourist destination for those who don’t leave colonial tours shaking the experience out of their heads as if in imitation of the Liberty Bell, Philly’s cracked symbol of freedom. For years, the historical society responsible for the ...”

“... of nothing but Israel”.’ During that trip to the Middle East in July 1953, he toured North Africa, Egypt and Jordan, speaking, as he put it, ‘to Sheiks, fellahs and bubble pipe salesmen’ along the way. It doesn’t seem, at least from the written record, that he talked to any Israelis. Israel had taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees ...”

“... these were the same German soldiers who went on to massacre whole villages as they withdrew to the north, I don’t know.When the Germans left, the family returned to Florence. In December 1944, Guido was arrested by the British and sent to a prison camp near Terni. I haven’t been able to determine what the exact charges against him were. Released in July ...”

“... Among philosophers​ of the 20th century, John Langshaw Austin is not a cultural celebrity like Heidegger, Russell, Sartre or Wittgenstein. But for a period after the Second World War, he was the leading figure of the school of ordinary language philosophy that dominated Oxford, achieved substantial influence in the wider Anglophone world and left its stamp for a much longer time on the way analytic philosophers work, think and write ...”

“... with more than 50 per cent of the votes cast in their constituencies, 44 (including Tony Blair and John Prescott) were elected with over 70 per cent, and two with over 80 per cent. By contrast, only 14 Conservatives won more than 50 per cent of the votes cast. The most successful Conservative, John Major in ...”

“... split the civilian élites that had hitherto supported it, as many of the landed notables of the North-East – the core of its system of political alliances – defected to the opposition. The military held off the pressure from the streets, but at the cost of losing control of Congress, where a ‘liberal front’ of retrograde landowners and local ...”

“... a girl like you, the best novel of Amis’s earlier years. That previous heroine was, in theory, North Country English, and the hero’s sad grotesque friend a Thames Valley Scot. But the Welsh Rhiannon and her Malcolm (whom the end of the novel leaves not altogether unhappily putting his love into his translation of Welsh Medieval verse) are to all intents ...”

“... by a living American. Here is the poem: As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, – John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going. Written around 1954, the poem got wide notice after ...”

“... to the assessments that claimants had to undergo in order to receive disability benefits. As John Pring shows in The Department, these changes – and others that followed – would ‘lead to countless deaths of disabled people’.Many governments have talked up the number and significance of false claims. A decade before the Blenheim conference, Peter ...”