“... was overshadowed by her older brother, André, a mathematical genius who at the age of twelve was reading Plato in Greek.As a toddler Weil developed an extreme fear of germs and couldn’t stand to be touched. She was also preternaturally clumsy. At school, she couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with the others. She suffered from phobias, a sense of ...”

“... Alexander Woollcott wrote to Rebecca West that he had the ‘impression from a fairly faithful reading of Dorothy Thompson in the Herald Tribune that she may sail at any minute in order to strangle Neville Chamberlain’.After Hitler’s invasion of Poland, opinion pollsters asked Americans to what extent they were in favour of aiding European ...”

“... horrific civil wars of the 20th century. The CIA never fully corrected its naive and ill-informed reading of Afghan politics until after bin Laden bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on 7 August 1998. A co-operative agreement between the US and Pakistan was anything but natural or based on mutual interests. Only two weeks after radical ...”

“... roman-à-clef, Sacred Paths to Wilful Freedom, circulated in samizdat in the early 1970s, only by reading the account in Nathans’s book – but I certainly recognised the combination of admiration, pity and, above all, irritation that her female protagonist felt about her impractical layabout dissident husband. Zlobina’s all too accurate reportage was ...”

“... picture; in some ways it reinforces it. Thompson’s second target is more consequential. It was Peter Laslett, adopting the techniques of the French historical demographers to the records of obscure English villages of the 17th century, who in 1963 first established what seemed to be the surprising modernity of English village life, at least with respect to ...”

“... importance to material and procedures that are in fact formulaic (indeed ‘expected’), reading into them significances that cannot be sustained. In his anti-historic stance – born of a hangover from the High Romantic premium on uniqueness induced by Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, not to mention Strauss, whom he so disdained – Keller simply ...”

“... as 1934, delegates had visited concentration camps – though their impressions make extraordinary reading. A 1938 report states: ‘The camp at Dachau is a model of its kind from the point of view of installations and administration. The regime inflicted on the prisoners, undoubtedly severe, cannot be described as inhuman. The sick, in particular, are treated ...”

“... view of Shakespeare’s national allegiance was eloquently summed up by another Philadelphian, Peter Markoe, in 1786: Monopolising Britain! Boast no more His genius to your narrow bounds confin’d; Shakespeare’s bold spirit seeks our western shore, A gen’ral blessing for the world design’d, And, emulous to form the rising age, The noblest Bard ...”

“... when Stephen Shaw writes about a death at Colnbrook in November 2004 the subject is clearly Kenny Peter, a 24-year-old who had fled from Nigeria. In a report published after the inquest, Shaw comments on a ‘lack of understanding by healthcare staff . . . failure in systems of psychiatric referrals and shortcomings in the communication between centre staff ...”

“... and perhaps novel about Rupert is that he has no respect at all. Take the case of Lorraine and Peter Landau, a couple in Northwood, who took time from what one presumes was a busy schedule to write to Rupert, having seen him in The Vortex, to comment on ‘the audibility of my performance in rather pompous terms’. Rupert opened the letter while ‘deeply ...”

“... read. One 17th-century French correspondent directly addressed the person she imagined secretly reading her letters, with a sardonic request that they at least put them back in their envelopes before sending them on their way. Others reminded their correspondents to keep schtum on topics that might draw the eye of a Tassis interceptor. Midura concludes that ...”

“... a participant recorded, they sat with ‘red ears’ as a leading authority of the WGE, Hans Peter Ipsen, instructed them on the supremacy of European law over the national law of any member state. Ipsen’s opinion would prevail: five days later Lecourt issued the ECJ’s ruling on Costa v. Enel to the same effect. The cornerstone of European justice ...”

“... with a coarse blanket for cover and an unhousebroken smell about him, of engines and tobacco. Reading and wakeful till all hours and alert all through his sleep. Even so, he hadn’t heard Queenie. He said she must be somewhere in the house. ‘Did you look in the bathroom?’ I said, ‘She’s not there.’ ‘Maybe in with her mother. Case of the ...”

“... Freud, as he immodestly urinated in front of his parents, would never amount to anything. On this reading, the dream loses its political specificity; it is simply an expression of the universal desire for patricide. The Oedipus complex, the centrepiece of Freud’s mature theory, thus promised to acquit an entire generation of politically disengaged sons from ...”

“... demands on human subjects that are too much to bear. Rereading the famous biographies – Jones, Peter Gay, Max Schur – I was now struck by just how exposed and vulnerable Freud was to the ills, major and petty, of the times, and by the fierce contrasts in his moods between blindness and insight, equanimity and dismay. Freud was articulate about what he ...”