“... in Lake Charles don’t look good at all. In neighbourhoods such as Greinwich Terrace, where in May the floods came on so fast that people didn’t have time to get into their cars to escape, the houses look as though they could be taken apart by hand. In Oak Park they look as though they could be pushed into the concrete gully that runs down the central ...”

“... so, he opposed a plan to admit women as fellows to one of Yale’s colleges. ‘Tory’, however, may be an exaggeration. He did nothing to hide his distaste for the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, and – more in keeping with his earlier sentiments – lent his name to public statements protesting against the Vietnam War, and ...”

“... saying they valued those very queries.’ While McChrystal’s macho style and stupid questions may have had a certain appeal, it’s possible that he was valued more for his military connections. It’s hard not to be reminded of the fraudulent blood-testing corporation Theranos, whose board included Sam Nunn, a former head of the US Senate’s Armed ...”

“... Behind me is Gibraltar’) were making him more influential than he had been as a politician. In May 1956, rather startlingly, Wyatt decided to test this proposition. Reporting on elections at the Amalgamated Engineering Union, in which he expected the Communist Party to make gains, he delivered a speech rather than a summary to AEU members and his other ...”

“... have made, in case of sudden occasions, a little reserve (besides the silver now given me) that I may not be obliged to borrow, and look little in the eyes of my fellow-servants.’ In the original she was naively confident that ‘God will not let me want.’ The later Pamela, with her prudent deposit account, reflects rather more abstractly, ‘Providence ...”

“... gained a measure of autonomy within the Austrian Empire, which was now close to total collapse. In May, the emperor fled Vienna. Austria was on its knees. The major powers of Northern Europe were preoccupied with their internal affairs. In a reversal of previous papal policy, the recently elected Pius IX had declared himself in favour of Italian national ...”

“... greatest tyrant that ever was in England … I wot not what Nero, what Dionysius, or what Mahomet may be compared unto him.’ Walker’s subject is the response to that incipient tyranny of some of Henry’s own subjects; not so much the resisters we learn about from Bernard – high-profile politicians and churchmen, More and Fisher and Pole, or the cast of ...”

“... of the Apostles, where the crowds think that the inspired Apostles are drunk on new wine: ‘Ye may heare them speake (at the 13th verse): Well fare this same good new wine; these good fellows have been at it, and now they can speake nothing but outlandish: some little broken Greek or Latin they had, and now out it comes.’ Perhaps most striking of all is ...”

“... Julia. The new-life-in-the-middle-of-destruction idea does indeed sound ‘terribly boring’; as may the very notion of writing a contemporary novel set in London during the Blitz. But Waters grabs the clichés and transcends them. Like a skilled and lucky actor, she has found her own emotional correlative for the apparently distant experiences she is ...”

“... suggests that Wodehouse’s lack of interest in sex was due to a 1901 attack of mumps which may also have left him infertile. Best of all, his brisk account of Wodehouse’s wartime broadcasts takes up only a fifth of the book. The only truly eventful episode in Wodehouse’s long life was his internment in Germany in 1940 (he and his wife were slow to ...”

“... Roger Bellet, calls ‘a large and peculiar hole’ in the story the book is telling. Vallès may not have been in Paris in 1848, but he had followed the events with much excitement as a lycéen in Nantes, where his father was now teaching, and he wrote elsewhere that he had greeted the February revolution by declaring he was ready ‘to offer my arm to ...”

“... Germany. ‘If we . . . can’t despite everything be at least optimistic for ourselves then we may as well pack up.’ Politically, it was more complicated: ‘My university comrades and I are racking our brains as to what kinds of intervention in the life of civil society we might make. We are completely at a loss as to where we, especially as Jews, can ...”

“... surgery and the free expression of sex, has become a major preoccupation in Colombia. The Church may rant against abortion and women’s scanty clothing, but in bookshops such beguiling works as The Kama Sutra for Lesbians are on prominent display, while next door Italian sneakers might be on sale for $290. Like all the other barrios in Medellín – and ...”

“... its rhythms. At least people knew who they were and had some solid ground to stand on. The winners may have been a little uppity or cruel, but they could not fly too high. There were things that people were ashamed to do, limits that marked out the moral boundaries of their deeds. The permissible (halal) was distinguishable from the impermissible ...”