“... impatience with Romantic antiquarianism can be sensed in the Short History when he comments on John Montague’s poem about a group of old country neighbours: ‘Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.’ These old people, who inspire mixed feelings of tenderness and repugnance, are compared by the poet to a ‘standing circle of stones’. For ...”

“... the body never falls) to idendifine the individuone.’ The most conspicuous absentee is probably John Barth, in whose work, from Chimera (1972), through The Tidewater Tales (1987), The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991) and On with the Story (1996), The Arabian Nights are interbred with many other tall tales and shaggy-dog relations. More even than an ...”

“... recasting of relations with Washington, until Bush placed Iran in the ‘axis of evil’ alongside North Korea and Saddam’s Iraq. Obama, too, recognised Soleimani as an adversary who might eventually become a partner, if not an ally.Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who lobbied for Soleimani’s assassination against the advice of Trump’s ...”

“... in troops. The third was the shadow of a territorially aggrandising United States, speeding across North America like a whirligig, into Mexico and then the Caribbean, followed by market expansion and gunboat intervention deeper into South America. 5. By the beginning of the 20th century, Latin America – its jurists, diplomats, politicians and intellectuals ...”

“... not much cleverer than opera plots as told by emojis, but it is nice to think about, for instance, John Adams’s Harmonielehre as a long flight from a relentless rhythmic unison in E minor via a Wagnerian prism to an ecstatic combination of a grid and a wild and dangerous celebration of E flat major. Four years ago I wrote a viola concerto – first performed ...”

“... in a bed and asleep at their desks in the remedial class. The head of a primary school in the North-East recounts a conversation with the Chairman of the Education Committee, who asked whether the school was successful. His criteria for success turn out to be O and A-Level results. ‘Pie in the sky,’ replied the head. ‘If you look at my attendance ...”

“... In later years the scene darkened. There was an intellectual restlessness abroad in the college. John Maynard Keynes appeared (from Eton, indeed, where he had been in Pop), and as a very junior fellow announced that he had ‘had a good look round this place and come to the conclusion that it’s pretty inefficient.’ Plainly, rows lay ahead, and Monty ...”

“... arrogant display of budget that speaks of royal visitations, the finish of the London Marathon, or John Major on walkabout, prospecting for inner-city blight. But on this unearned, mint morning, the fuss is all about real royalty, indigenous royalty: one of our local princes of darkness, a cashmere colonel, is about to be boxed. A mob of expectant necrophiles ...”

“... National Insurance ‘virtually bypassed local government’ from its commencement in 1911, John Davis remarks in his chapter on central government and the towns. In this way, equity jilted devolution. Central expenditure on social services rose more than fourfold between 1918 and 1921 – a rise made possible by the ‘more buoyant central tax ...”

“... and Edmond Halley, those grandees of the Royal Society, and on the other the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, the doyen of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Johns levels the same complaint against historians of science as against Eisenstein: that they take the subject ‘outside history’ and miss the struggles, practical as well as ...”

“... safes in the Blitz, relying on bombs to drown out the noise’; ‘I blew safes for the Army, in North Africa and Italy’; ‘I flogged coffin lids from the crematorium to cabinet-makers and shrouds to the underwear workshops’; ‘I reported publicans for decorating their premises without a licence’; ‘I was a tart, under orders to badger my clients ...”

“... Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and its sequels than it does to its Caribbean ancestry. John Blair isn’t overly preoccupied with definitions, though he is keen to make clear that the modern vampire is only one element in a pan-historical complex of beliefs. Etymology can be valuable however when tracing the transmission of beliefs between ...”

“... had unsavoury friends. His nickname in high school was ‘Gangster’, mostly because he was from north Jersey and we had gangster neighbours. ‘Gangster from Gangsterland’, they’d tease him. But he also carried the tag because he was tough and found his way into all kinds of fights when you’d never have guessed there was any fighting to be done. He ...”

“... circulation and advertising systems for mid-sized newspapers owned by Thomson Reuters throughout North America; and, best of all, pre-internet matchmaking software to be installed in kiosks and used by lonely hearts.A few years after I left Andersen, the company changed its name to Accenture. A commercial dispute had begun between Andersen Consulting and its ...”

“... shifted to the colonies. It was here, especially in Indochina, Black Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, that the SDECE found its true focus and built up formidable networks. Nonetheless, there were a fair number of Clouseau-like disasters. In 1949 it was learnt with horror that the Communist Vietminh radio was broadcasting verbatim the secret report ...”