“... 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 ...”

“... a majority of us supported Kennedy and his call for a more active, adept government both at home and abroad. In one way or another we were influenced by the liberal academic culture that spread across America’s leading campuses after World War Two: but we were a diverse bunch, producing a best-selling right-wing author (George Gilder), a leading ...”

“... late start as a writer. Agnes Sanderson, sister of a Harrovian friend, later described the London home of Galsworthy’s parents in a devastating vignette that makes one want to know more about her: ‘the atmosphere of Victorian propriety, the dumb immaculate servants, the low flannelety Galsworthyian voices, killed all life in us.’ She also recalled ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... dotted with monuments to Channel voyages of the past. Marooned in the middle of the tarmac is the Lord Warden Hotel, once a luxury palazzo where wealthy 19th-century passengers arriving on the Pullman used to stay on their way to France; it was requisitioned by the navy during the Second World War and has housed a set of offices for freight forwarding agents ...”

“... 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 ...”