“... all odds, they fight their way back home, a trek of a thousand miles, which first takes them north to the Black Sea then west to Byzantium. (The term anabasis technically denotes only the march ‘up country’ to Cunaxa; the march ‘down’ to the sea is properly the katabasis, that along the coast the parabasis.) On the way, the Greeks encountered ...”

“... Muggletonians was, notably, Christopher Hill, who found significant links between these people and John Milton, as they drank and argued in the London pubs of the 1650s. For Hill and Thompson these were ‘radicals’, political as well as religious activists, part of Hill’s World Turned Upside Down. A vertical history of the subject could not at that time ...”

“... or meditation in church and home. With the appearance of Luther, the age of the cult image in north-eastern Europe came to an end: art, it seemed, was about to be eliminated by the word of God. The Kingdom of Christ, Luther declared, ‘is a hearing kingdom, not a seeing kingdom: for the eyes do not lead and guide us to where we know and find Christ, but ...”

“... in public relations for the military, specialising in the missile detection radar that promised North Americans they’d have a good fifteen minutes of warning before any nuclear attack. He took sick leave for depression and had panic attacks; he had been hospitalised, and reported regularly for electroshock therapy years after his release. His mother also ...”

“... the party’s co-operation agreement with the Scottish Greens. Yousaf and his replacement, John Swinney, sullied their reputations by defending the former health secretary Michael Matheson, who misled Holyrood’s presiding officer over £11,000 of roaming charges racked up on his iPad. The SNP’s centralising tendencies, lack of transparency and ...”

“... of the 18th and 19th centuries, most of the land enclosed was added to existing farms, but in 1809 John Hulton used the land allotted to him from the enclosure of Marske Moor in Swaledale to create a new farm, Cordilleras. The farm and most of the fields round about were named after places in South America, Valparaiso, Cotopaxi, Sierra Pedragosa and so ...”

“... to Mogosoaia station, from where the coffin was transported to the cathedral of Curtea de Arges, north-west of Bucharest. With thousands of people holding candles lining the railway track, it took the train six hours to make a two-hour journey. Marie was interred that evening next to her husband, who had died in 1927. Her heart, as she had desired, was taken ...”

“... over much of Syria and Iraq and is spreading its tentacles south to the Gulf states and west to North Africa. How is this dreadful turn of events to be understood? Jean-Pierre Filiu, who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris after a career in France’s diplomatic corps which included tours of duty in Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, argues in his new book, From Deep ...”

“... Register called it ‘Silly Billy’s Tomfoolery’ and dismissed its ‘indecent trash’. John Bull said that ‘the dirty abominations of the raffs of literature are far below notice,’ then devoted three issues to reviews, spoofs and comments on the book. They even got hold of one of his letters to her, and published it (thus, ironically, doing a ...”

“... and woke up at seven. The Crossroads Women’s Centre is in a mews behind Kentish Town Road in North London: she arrived early with a sandwich, and napped on the sofa as she waited. She wore a black top edged with black and silver plastic jewels, and her wavy blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail. The English Collective of Prostitutes, formed in 1975 with ...”

“... the Society’s history in more than six hundred pages, ably translated from German by John Noël Dillon. Markus Friedrich’s volume could be described as relentless, but its barrage of information is a trustworthy basis from which to begin to understand one of the most remarkable products of Counter-Reformation energy. The Jesuits have always ...”

“... solid chargehand’s tread and decent low voice as he rounded the corner with his workmate, John Armitage ...’ The parody seems to invite a warm-hearted review. What is wrong with it? The serious Hoggart snaps: ‘Epithets are used for their likely effect on the reader, not to catch the nature of what is being described.’ Such books are no use, with ...”

“... of Robeson’s music was even more problematic. He was happy enough to perform songs like ‘John Brown’s Body’ and ‘Old Man River’, written by whites about what the blacks must be suffering, but he thought jazz had been ‘debased’ by white influence. When someone in a Des Moines audience asked for ‘St Louis Blues’, Robeson’s manager ...”

“... mention the 1860 battle (nor sub Huxley or Darwin or Hooker). Another portrait, another angle. John Collier’s 1890 painting is the most familiar image: a stiff, hard, sad old man, a man of power – he was ‘the Pope’ and ‘the General’ even before he had rank to pull. Collier was good at old men in pain – he caught Darwin’s next-to-last ...”

“... consistent, until ill-health restrained her, in going after it. Even Tomalin’s description of John Middleton Murry’s role in Mansfield’s life as ‘crucial and largely unfortunate’ seems to me glib. Is it right to ignore, as Tomalin does, that farewell letter in which Mansfield wrote: ‘I think no two lovers ever walked the earth more joyfully ...”