“... a confident and aggressive public stance with being a good deal managed, protected and cosseted at home. Something of all this must have rubbed off on John, but what the boy was chiefly subjected to was his father’s gospel of the day’s work. I do hope you will go up a form this term ... You are quite all right if you will only think; when you don’t ...”

“... and 1905 were away for nearly a year. In Speak, Memory he writes about the moment in their journey home when the train reached the Russian border: ‘now, sixty years later’, it seems to him ‘a rehearsal – not of the grand homecoming that will never take place, but of its constant dream in my long years of exile’. The upheaval when at last it arrived ...”

“... no Calverley, alas), he has one very heartening story which may be true even though it has Lord Dacre for its authority. After the suicide of the anti-smoking fanatic Adolf Hitler, it seems, all the bunker deputies began to light up: ‘now the headmaster had gone and the boys could break the rules. Under the soothing influence of nicotine’, they ...”

“... other type has Kipling, Ian Hay and P.G. Wodehouse), and in the average well-to-do home’. Initial reviews of Personal Pleasures – ‘most amusing’, ‘delightful’, ‘an ideal bedside book’ – were along these lines, calculated to please a publisher but suggesting something altogether slighter than the reality. In her introduction ...”

“... Lindisfarne, Cuthbert’s monks were carrying his body from place to place in search of a new home. Provisions had already run low when they discovered that their last cheese had been stolen from its hiding place. Taking counsel, they did the obvious thing and asked their saint to turn the thief into a fox. At once a vixen appeared with a cheese in its ...”

“... the mid-6th century, was Cyrus II (c.559-30), known, with reason, as Cyrus the Great. Originally a lord of Anshan (a hitherto insignificant piece of cattle country in southwestern Iran) he conquered in quick succession a group of once-dominant powers: first and foremost Media, in what today is northwestern Iran, but also the Neo-Babylonians and the Lydian ...”

“... in 1651, and also ‘buy for us 15 or 20 young lusty negers of about 15 years of age, bring them home with you to London.’ Among the aristocracy and gentry, it had become fashionable to be waited on by dark-skinned boys and girls. A year after he admired Mingo’s dancing, Pepys noted in passing that his patron, ...”

“... the latest, and soon to be greatest, mercantile power in the world. But Tangier was too far from home for the overstretched resources of the English Crown to maintain for long, no matter how much money was poured into it. By 1680, Moroccan armies had seized three of the colony’s five forts. Four years later, it was abandoned, destroyed by the same people ...”

“... contemporaries) but not parents, appetites but not political ideals, ambitions but not hope. In Lord of the Flies the boys were on an island. In Ellis’s novels, at least up until Lunar Park, there has been no elsewhere – other than oblivion. And the violence was the route to this longed-for oblivion (the violent acts function as malign forms of ...”

“... of Tesco, but not Shirley – because he was firmly of the opinion that women belonged in the home. In 1985, after her father was dead, Porter tried again for a seat on the board, citing her experience in running the council as proof that she could manage the affairs of Tesco. ‘Look, Shirley,’ Ian MacLaurin told her, ‘you’ll just have to accept ...”

“... was in a hospital ward when I saw the photos he was posting on Facebook: ‘Welcome to my new home,’ he joked. It seemed fitting that my Facebook feed was filling up with posts from a mental institution. As the conflict over Ukraine intensified my social media feeds became more and more unsettling. Acquaintances from Moscow, the ‘creatives’ who make ...”

“... back and she came after me and I couldn’t get rid of her. I said no, my dear. I’m just going home – for I’m never naughty with those poor things – but it was no use.’ Though Burne-Jones would relish the opportunity to illustrate Chaucer for the Kelmscott Press many years later, Morris could never get him to take up the fabliaux. ‘Lust does ...”

“... God’s sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country.’ Visiting Northern Ireland as home secretary in 1970, Reginald Maudling, whose mellow moderation verged on a slothful desire for an easy life, was understandably exasperated by the Ulster problem – but no more so than a long line of politicians, before and since. Churchill – not so easily ...”

“... were intimidated by his habit of stabbing the wooden leg with his paper knife in order to drive home the point of the argument. His journal, a battered naval logbook, contains entries such as ‘To Clarkson’s today to buy a new disguise.’ One of his agents recalled that to approach Cumming’s office, ‘it was necessary for a visitor to climb a ...”

“... of November 1950 who, believing his own press clippings, had foolishly promised to have the troops home from Korea by Christmas. As Nato’s supreme commander, Wesley Clark faced an altogether different adversary: Slobodan Milosevic, the president of what remained of Yugoslavia. Although by 1999 Clark’s nemesis posed no real threat to his neighbours, he ...”