“... de Grouchy’s classic error of engaging the Prussian rearguard at Wavre on the critical day, 18 June 1815, although he and his 33,000 French soldiers could have reached Waterloo in good time: he heard the gunfire, yet persisted in his own separate fight, thus violating Napoleon’s very first rule of concentrating all available forces at all costs for the ...”

“... VIII announced his intention to honour the marriage treaty and marry his brother’s widow. On 11 June 1509, in a quiet wedding ceremony at Greenwich, Catherine became queen of England. Despite the difference in their ages – Henry had been a mischievous page at Catherine’s first wedding – the auguries for the marriage were good. The royal couple from ...”

“... In Venezuela at the end of June, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez and Diego Maradona, three heroes of the people in Latin America, kicked off the Copa América. Morales, pleased with his dribbling, kept possession for rather longer than might have been thought polite. When he passed, Chávez, instinctive politician that he is, at once flicked the ball on to the feet of the Hand of God ...”

“... clamoured for action as indicators pointed to imminent famine. But it was only when excess deaths rose sharply, and the UN officially declared a famine, that the Obama administration exempted emergency aid workers from prosecution. Around 200,000 people had already died. Afterwards, aid workers quietly adopted a principle they call ‘no ...”

“... a brilliant certainty and roguery about it, as when he delivers his famous attack on the Symbolist rose: The rose is a likeness of the sun, the sun is a likeness of the rose, a dove – of a girl, and a girl – of a dove. Images are gutted like scarecrows and packed with foreign ...”

“... facts which hitherto it has been the fashion to ignore ... How often have I been vituperated by rose-water critics because I have written of fighting and tried to inculcate elementary lessons, such as that it is a man’s duty to defend his country, and that only those who are prepared for war can protect themselves and such as are dear to ...”

“... I last flew into Sarajevo on 28 June 1994. The besieged city was momentarily quiet. Forces loyal to Milosevic and Karadzic looked down from the hills, but a demilitarisation agreement was holding firm. On the drive from the airport, I shared a ride with an Austrian journalist, in town because it was 80 years to the day since Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been shot ...”

“... the three-year curriculum in eight months. He entered the Prussian civil service in 1792 and rose quickly through the ranks, trusted with diplomatic duties that went far beyond those usually given to a surveyor of mines. Humboldt also lived another life, publishing his first book in 1790, on the basalt rock of the Rhine valley; other scientific works ...”

“... The settlement became enormous, a desert city of unorthodox art and spectacular architecture, its rose-tinged limestone buildings rising from the grey sand in a shallow basin framed by low hills. It would have been an alien place to a visitor from Greece or Rome, full of strange temples to strange divinities such as the Mesopotamian god Bel, whose enormous ...”

“... discussed pay disparities between Black and white authors under the hashtag #publishingpaidme this June, Smith said that most of their income comes from touring. But Homie makes the case for Smith as a poet of the page. In ‘how many of us have them?’ Smith uses a self-invented form, the ‘dozen’, whose 12 stanzas increase in length, a line at a ...”

“... commitment to international law and peace in Palestine,’ he told the Jewish Chronicle in June. I backfill and I paraphrase because I’ve been trying to check my scribbled notes with Unite, which hosted the meeting, and the Palestinian Mission, because I’d hate to get it wrong: but I think you can see why I was thinking, so this is diplomacy, and ...”

“... and an initial expedition in 1959 found a petroleum reservoir near the village of Shaim. In early June 1960, Well R-6 was sunk; after 18 days of drilling to a depth of 1500 metres, it began to spew forth oil at a rate of 400-500 tons a day – the first industrial-scale find in Siberia. Success at Shaim set off a feverish burst of exploration, and more than ...”

“... defiled the streams of truth ‘with this Pagan mud’, she kept her translation by her and on 11 June 1675 presented a copy to Arthur Annesley, First Earl of Anglesey, to dispose of as he thought best. Anglesey (1614-86) had achieved preferment under both Cromwell and Charles II; in 1660 he intervened to secure the release of Milton from prison, and Milton ...”

“... and theatre clubs, Surrealism, steel furniture, faintly obscure poetry’ were among the things Rose Macaulay singled out as characterising the ‘decorative, intelligent, extravagant’ 1920s. In 1919 the Women’s Engineering Society was founded and Nancy Astor became the first female MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. A year later Oxford began ...”

“... trust and believability, and with them the need for immediacy. Staff numbers – 3500 in 1937 – rose to nine thousand by the summer of 1941, with a particular expansion in news and foreign broadcasting. Whether the news became ‘truer’ as a result is a different question, given that the BBC was charged with keeping up the nation’s morale as well as ...”