“... mass poverty and social injustice go unaddressed. A United Nations report published in May described what is now a nihilistic conflict unfolding in Liberia and the surrounding region, involving armed youths moving freely between four countries. The document is an implicit criticism of those in the international community who for years have ...”

“... where they showed their gratitude by electing a man in a monkey-suit as mayor, an event which may finally have sent Peter Mandelson round the bend.) But Blair has not yet been able to embrace the referendum that Goldsmith among others forced him to sign up for, the one on Britain’s entry into the euro. The reason, of course, is not the will of the ...”

“... much like Manda Elizalde’s garden on a grand scale. The Fair’s twenty million visitors may have arrived in a state of complete ignorance, but having watched the antics of the captive Filipinos they presumably went away feeling virtuous that their country had brought belated civilisation to these savages. Filipinos still shudder at the memory of the ...”

“... of Milanese mercenaries he had stationed outside the city. As the Pazzi now discovered, Lorenzo may have been young, but he was as hardheaded a warrior as the mercenaries among whom he had grown up: the handsome brutes Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan and Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini. For the next ten years, Lorenzo would contrive savage revenge on his ...”

“... hitting the ball all over the place – a division long replicated by gentleman batsmen (Cowdrey, May, Dexter) and working-class bowlers (Bedser, Trueman, Statham). Professional soccer changed all that: the spectators and their heroes on the pitch were alike proletarian. Upper-class amateurism could not dominate (or even long survive) a game which commanded ...”

“... in a way. I mean there is such a great army of them and it is all so expensive for Lord Moyne (may he burn in hell). The sisters’ nicknames are very good, like a poem by Nash. Unity was Bird or Birdie, Bobo or Boudy or Boud, Pamela was Woman, sometimes Woo or Wooms. Diana was Cord or Honks and often Nard or Nardy. Deborah is always Debo, except when she ...”

“... it as a decoy to distract attention from a highly embarrassing story, which was emerging slowly in May and June 2003, that the long-debated Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist.’ Four weeks after the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan’s Today story, Campbell had not asked for an apology for it specifically, had not referred it to the BBC complaints ...”

“... snorted: ‘Bernie, you never carry tweezers into court? Nail clippers, yes . . .’ ‘You may scoff,’ Bernie said, ‘but I have known nasty injuries occur from slivers of flying glass, where in the hands of a man trained by the St John Ambulance, a handy pair of sterilised – ’ But then Nicolette gave a squeak of triumph. She held up the plug of ...”

“... on 12 July on the coast of the Sahara desert?’ This and other corrections to the account may be ‘slight’, as Miles says, but they confirm the untrustworthiness of Savigny and Corréard. By this point in the book, the two survivors’ account is utterly discredited in any case. Their attempt to show that the Restoration was the root of the whole ...”

“... emotions and sex lives of the enthusiasts (even in the tree tops), however fact-checked the latter may be. Nevertheless, it is fascinating that a college dropout called Michael Taylor, who worked as a knife salesman and grocery clerk, came to figure out which were the world’s tallest trees: everyone knew they were redwoods, but the precise trees had not been ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... flagship, ‘all the world never saw such a force as theirs.’ When it left Lisbon harbour on 28 May 1588, the Armada comprised 150 vessels, ranging from thousand-ton merchantmen to small felucca message boats. The mission, under the command of the duke of Medina Sidonia, was to get boots on the ground for an invasion of England. The fleet carried 18,973 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... cooler than Nick and Ty, who gather at a disused barn on one of their families’ properties. On 1 May the group celebrate ‘Belt Day’ with a ritual that consists of taking their shirts off, painting each other’s torsos, dancing and spinning, drinking from a bottle said to contain a cocktail of ecstasy and ‘herbsbane’, and descending in turns to a ...”