“... is not a Bolshevist, an Atheist, or a Communist, is not a Prohibitionist, in spite of what anyone may say, her husband was not a conscientious objector, and her children are not neglected.’ She was disappointed that the first woman to take a seat in the Commons was the Conservative Nancy Astor, whom she did not consider ‘a good specimen for the first ...”

“... you were doing. Suddenly kids with nothing else going for them could be the entitled ones. One may dislike snotty narcissism, while arguing that at least this way it was an equal opportunity sport. The music of the New Romantic aspirants became the popular soundtrack to Thatcher’s Britain – ‘You’re indestructible, always believing’ – but that ...”

“... So too did Madeleine Thiéry, the baker’s wife who made the cake, and it seems that Marguerite may have given her away when the Germans threatened to shoot the Barbier sons if she did not name other Resistance supporters in the village. Before she was deported to Germany, Marguerite tried to hang herself in her cell.In retrospect, Rée refused either to ...”

“... politics. No Labour politician of his time better justified the proposition, which Denis Healey may have been the first to make, that ‘Labour owed more to Methodism than to Marx.’ From his religion, Bevin probably also derived his frugality and diligence. Though he drank and smoked himself to death, and enjoyed the music hall and Chelsea Football ...”

“... washed up at Preston in Sussex, Lady Shirley asked her steward to send them up to London ‘so we may drink it, which will end the dispute with the commissions of the customs’.When goods went missing it was always easy to blame the people who actually heaved them from the sea. Sir John Killigrew, who held the right to wrecks on the Lizard peninsula, faced ...”

“... In May 1804, at the age of 18, Benjamin Robert Haydon left his home in Plymouth and set off for London to become a great artist. His mother was distraught, his father furious, but there was no doubt in Haydon’s mind either of his vocation or of his genius. He could have worked in his father’s bookshop and inherited a secure, independent income but he didn’t want to ...”

“... is private property.’ The property owner doesn’t specify the threat Tunde poses. It may be the act of having set up a tripod, the taking of the photograph or his physical presence, but ‘this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to him.’Tunde, like Cole, grew up in Lagos but has lived in the United States for nearly three ...”

“... have the balls to press it – and they’re right.Cixin’s view of the universe as a dark forest may be pessimistic, but his view of humanity and its future is extremely optimistic. We are not in the end times: we are babies at the foot of a long staircase. We will develop superhard nanomaterials that will allow us to build an elevator to space. We will ...”

“... entitled to the wealth of this land which they laboured to produce. The wealth of this land may not be appropriated from them. It neither belongs to the Englishman nor his Orangeman Carsonite lackey, nor his Green Tory lapdog in Dublin.’ For this occasion, she had adopted a brogue, which she kept up while speaking about her role as an ‘Irish freedom ...”

“... a little way to the north must leave the city along the road to the east (which is now open, but may be closed again at a moment’s notice), and, running the gauntlet of checkpoints and roadblocks, make his roundabout way to the east and then the north before reaching his land.Or, rather, before reaching the gate closest to his land. During the months after ...”

“... A pure grifter could have found less dangerous ways of making a living. But it seems that Reubeni may have recanted in the end. In 1993, Elias Lipiner uncovered evidence that he converted to Christianity at the eleventh hour, which would have allowed him to be garrotted rather than face the pyre alive. (Verskin doesn’t mention Lipiner’s discovery.) The ...”

“... by rejecting foreign products. When the Qianlong emperor wrote ‘we possess all things,’ he may have meant that long before Macartney arrived, the Qing emperors, aristocracy and the Chinese elites had already acquired the European goods they wanted: pocket watches, muskets, spectacles, magnifying glasses, telescopes, mechanical models of the solar ...”

“... white girls to a ‘fraudulent love’ that is ‘a short stop to Shirley Temple’. Claudia may dismember her dolls but Morrison herself is not envious of her characters. They are not punished for the qualities she has given them. Pride does not always come before a fall. Beauty is not bestowed so it might be marred or destroyed. The people in her pages ...”

“... as Bergen, the second largest city in Norway. Asle 1 has been married just once and though there may have been a lapse in his drinking days with a woman called Guro (who also has a double, in the shape of Åsleik’s sister), he has shown no interest in women since Ales’s death; Asle 2 is also single but was twice married and divorced, first to Liv, then ...”

“... hazards than Your Majesty.’ ‘Not so,’ said William. ‘I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without presumption commit my life to God’s keeping; but you …’At this instant, a cannonball from the ramparts laid Godfrey dead at the king’s feet. Macaulay goes on to say that ‘it was not found, however, that the fear of being Godfreyed – such ...”