“... different head of state, such as Göring or Himmler, Germany might have sued for peace well before May 1945. But the Allies had agreed at Casablanca in January 1943 to demand nothing short of unconditional surrender from Germany. The armistice in the First World War had been a costly mistake, they concluded. It had allowed the far right, not least the ...”

“... He knows ‘comment ils se sont faits et comment ils auraient pu ne pas se faire’. Baudelaire may be subliminally pondering his own weirdness or monstrousness here. In an essay of 1930 Eliot argued that Baudelaire ‘attracted pain to himself’, and that while he had ‘great strength’, it was strength ‘merely to suffer’. Certainly there is no ...”

“... the Greens, at least, of Decontentification. They alone seem to know what they want, and they may be well rewarded for that in ...”

“... education of anyone who spoke English. Consequently it still exerts a literary influence which may reflect hostility to the religious and political tenets that inspired it as much as reverence for the biblical message. In a variety of guises and moods, one can hear the KJB resonating in the work of Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison. One of ...”

“... in relation to her brothers to sour their relationship although she was not blind to it. She may never have known the extent to which they manipulated the family property to exclude her, but it was no more than the truth when she wrote in a rare outburst in a letter in 1950 that she had never had anything ‘excepting what I made for myself … I was ...”

“... a very long day to egress on foot: if you leave at around 7 a.m., and are reasonably fit, you may find yourself in open fields late that evening. Following Connolly, what this says about London I’m not absolutely sure: all I do know is that after doing a couple of these radial walks – first northeast, then due south – I was altogether more grounded ...”

“... human rights groups the next. It’s a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it’s indefinable. This fusion of despotism and postmodernism, in which no truth is certain, is reflected in the craze among the Russian elite for neuro-linguistic programming and ...”

“... from which he had risen to win recognition as an antiquarian. Marliani, whose smaller map of 1544 may have helped to inspire Bufalini, was a scholar of Greek rather than a craftsman. So he enlisted Giovanni Battista Palatino, a famous scribe who had published a manual of calligraphy in 1540, to letter his map. A hospitable and generous man, Marliani liked to ...”

“... Lawrence quotes one informant who, when queried on precisely this point, retorted that ‘there may be striving, not competing’: a distinction, Lawrence remarks, that ‘too few left intellectuals proved ready to hear’. His book is a lesson in ...”

“... removed during the dig will be brought back and reset. There is no mention of parking, so we may have seen the last of the tattered blue van disgorging migrants. In the meantime, the vegetable sellers have been relocated from the other side of the church. Every Saturday in the small hours they set up their stalls outside the house. By nine in the morning ...”

“... in their power … to confer upon you a certain favour, which if it does not cost you your life, may stick by you all your days.’The pox was also considered a badge of honour because it was associated with soldiers and sailors (men who were away from their wives for long periods and thought more likely to visit whorehouses and risk the ...”

“... a classic German Habilitationsschrift: weighty, well argued, thorough and deeply researched. It may not be an easy read – the fact that its author isn’t a native speaker of English shows at many points – but it is most certainly an indispensable ...”

“... Belonging – and noticing a similarity between the titles of the first and last chapters, may well conclude that the book’s argument runs something like this: wherever in the world the Jews have lived, they have yearned to belong to that place as Jews. But in many of these places, non-Jewish society brutally rejected the possibility of Jewish ...”

“... the investigation last? When can I leave for Kazakhstan? I explain to Ivan that the investigation may be complex and that we will need to follow all the relevant protocols. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He stares down at his phone, scrolling for emails and messages. Sergei’s PA has booked me into a hotel that has only recently opened. She tells me it will be good ...”

“... God himself compromised by being the creator of a sinful creature?) So praise, for example, may now be born of pride, which God opposes; and even though God must be worthy of the highest praise – no one and nothing could be more worthy – it is not clear that man, let alone this particular man, is up to the task (there is a difference between seeking ...”