“... saw off General Galtieri and his miscalculated assault on the Falklands, while her second saw off Arthur Scargill and his equally miscalculated assault on the National Coal Board. The triumphs were, of course, triumphs only in terms of the Government’s immediate aims – to throw out the occupying forces in the one case, and to avoid any concessions about ...”

“... the Victorian cult of the poet merely confirms the rightness of the minority view – there was little correlation between the nature of Tennyson’s finest achievements and his character as the ideal type of poet. He was in truth so far from being true to that type that to read him after a long interval is to be astonished by his strangeness, almost his ...”

“... beside it, are familiar enough to students of British art, but the exhibition, which has been very little publicised and is rather hidden away at the east end of the Clore Galleries, includes several little-known masterpieces. The most startling of these is Ford Madox Brown’s watercolour of 1863, entitled Mauvais Sujet, of ...”

“... the mind electrically at odds with vacancy and repose; about the astonishing turbulence in the little grey cells of little grey people like you, and me, and Howie, who at lunchtime quits his office on the mezzanine floor and goes down the escalator to the street, to buy milk and cookies and a new pair of shoelaces. On ...”

“... Loyalist organisations, still less distinguish between them. You could say that there has been little reason for the average Londoner to get acquainted with the world of Loyalist terror: the UFF do not bomb the City, the UVF don’t shoot policemen. Loyalist paramilitaries now claim more victims than the IRA, but they confine their murdering to Catholics ...”

“... headmaster, and had been induced to masturbate a middle-aged man behind some gorse bushes (‘Dear little fellow … play with it … pull it about’): ‘I made an entry in my diary to remind me it had been something.’ There in a concise formulation is the speaking silence of so many gay lives of that era. But far less problematic scenes and social ...”

“... and her own responses to it. (That she’s far less well-known than Goldin is an indication of how little interest the art world had, until recently, in Black subjects.) She often compares herself to a blues or jazz musician. ‘If people could feel what I feel when I hear a Billie Holiday song,’ she says, ‘that’s what I would want them to feel when they ...”

“... of the miners’ strike of 1984-85, the questions remain, in ascending order of importance: was Arthur Scargill, then and still President of the NUM, the right leader for the strike? Could the strike have been won? If it had, would this have improved the fortunes of the labour movement? Would such an improvement have altered the course of Thatcher’s ...”

“... Last See Your Father? Which leaves me, I guess, with a choice between Oh, mein Papa and Daddy’s Little Girl. I’d better get a move on, or I’ll be lumbered with When Father Papered the Parlour, which wouldn’t do at all, When fathers die, their children are free to write memoirs. Historically, one of the main perks of being the next generation is that ...”

“... you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!’ Brave little Tink is saved every time. Some really did have faith in fairies. Barrie’s friend Arthur Conan Doyle, champion of fictional rationality, was perfectly convinced of their existence. Barrie knew them for what they ...”

“... institution’ exists. Although the Rockefeller Foundation eventually backed the refugee project, little study has been made of that support: which scholars were helped and why? Most important, Krohn seeks to rebut the ‘stereotypical impression’ that the New School remained a German ghetto for scholars who had ...”

“... campaigned loudly for action to be taken. In 1830 the infamous Black Line was thought up by George Arthur, the lieutenant-governor. ‘I had lived in Tasmania for two years,’ Shakespeare writes, ‘before I was able to come to terms with the Black Line. Powerful though the image was, Arthur’s response to the Aborigines ...”

“... over an open fire, carved into thick slices and served in its own juice, with nothing but a little mustard or horseradish as accompaniment. Rogers concentrates on the 18th century, when beef enjoyed its patriotic apotheosis, but he argues that it still lingers on the palate of English national memory, as shown by reactions to the recent trauma of mad ...”

“... of the place and its people, whom they experienced as not antisemitic and generous in sharing the little they had with strangers. The Soviet state was generous too, at least compared to other states faced with an influx of Jewish refugees: it offered citizenship – admittedly an offer regarded by many refugees with suspicion – and provided work, schooling ...”

“... Australia’s first Government House, built for Captain Arthur Phillip when he arrived with the first fleet of convicts and settlers in 1788, was demolished in 1846 to make way for the grander Neoclassical architecture that befitted a burgeoning colony. Today the site is the forecourt of the new Museum of Sydney, with the ghostly floor-plan of the original residence picked out in white on the granite flagstones ...”