“... concentrating largely on the British colonics of Kenya, Nyasaland and the Rhodesias, North and South, and on the related work of mental hospitals in South Africa. Ethnopsychiatry was almost entirely the theoretical preoccupation of the small group of European men who worked in the colonial mental health services; its aim was to uncover and, where ...”

“... have just as much right to my opinion as they.’ Many servants, especially from the North of England, brought a knowledge of trade unionism and its tactics to the campaign for the vote. They also organised themselves. Central to Schwartz’s book – and closest to her heart, I suspect – is her research on the Domestic Workers’ Union of ...”

“... here, far from softening it, themselves took on the ruthless quality of the local nature. (John Berryman’s father shot himself in Clearwater, Florida, in 1926, after some failed land speculation.) Eventually, made safe – though never altogether – for year-round habitation by the twin miracles of air-conditioning and refrigeration. Florida still ...”

“... untrue. Marlene is not American; like Butcher, she is a provincial, from the tiny town of Benalla, north-east of Melbourne (where, it turns out, she burned down the high school). Dozy Boylan’s painting is not a major Leibovitz, but a canvas ‘completed’ in the 1940s after Leibovitz’s death by his second wife, and passed off as a great early ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”