“... 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 ...”

“... history. In Ali’s district, for example, I found that power had recently shifted from a feudal lord to a new commander backed by Iranian cash and weapons, who administered justice and controlled relations with the provincial Government. A new Hazara nationalism was coalescing around Governor Khalili. Women are more visible in Ali’s community than among ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... greeting. Time after time have I gone out looking for a woman, and time after time have I returned home alone, because I have not had the courage to lake advantage of a woman’s encouragement. This is the reason why I have never made a mistake in accosting a respectable married woman, in spite of my dealings with scores of other strange women, through a ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of their marriage, Alma supported them both, selling dresses at Arnold Constable, Macy’s and Lord & Taylor. She seems to have been the one who handled financial matters, while Singer hid behind the persona of humble immigrant. In his old age and after his death, she would pester friends to get better deals on royalties, or to negotiate a fat sum for the ...”

“... the folk consciousness of the Almanacs. Songs for Political Action includes a number of amateur home-recordings, among them a capella attacks on a 1947 Congressional Bill to enforce the registration of all CP members and a heartfelt tribute to the Party press. ‘A paper with a message, a paper with the science, a paper with a love for all ...”

“... If so, they are in respectable company. Paul Johnson (described in this paper some years ago by Lord Blake as the greatest living British journalist) has declared in the Spectator that he found the book ‘morbidly compulsive from start to finish’. It starts in a world that is now very remote. Huffington evokes Belle Epoque Paris as it would have seemed ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 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 ...”

“... votaries.’ The British (and the French), who had gone with the same extravagant hope, had come home empty-handed. These differences inevitably determined the kinds of settlement that evolved in the New World. The North American colonies were populated, for the most part, by small farmers who finally displaced (or massacred) rather than integrated the ...”

“... the other’.We know what Wedderburn said because he was subject to extensive surveillance by the Home Office. Spies went to the meetings on Hopkins Street, and their lengthy reports act as a supplement to Wedderburn’s written works. Printed handbills make clear that one debate was entitled ‘Can it be murder to KILL A TYRANT?’, and subtitled ‘Has a ...”

“... with one gun now doing the killing work of 100 riflemen, he argued, the other 99 could go home, and live in peace. (There must be a flaw there somewhere.) And then there was the argument that you get with every radically new weapon: ‘With a few hundred Gatlings on both sides,’ the Indianapolis Sentinel claimed around 1880, ‘armies would melt ...”