“... notes, which are scattered, in what must often be inconvenient forms, in libraries in England and North America, is a singular accomplishment. There is no danger that Sharpe has made Drake seem less interesting than he is. How interesting is he? Sharpe is impressed not only by the extent of his commentaries, which, though far from unusual in form, may be ...”

“... and all-round plausibility, The Emperor of Ocean Park lies somewhere south of John Grisham and north of Nancy Drew. It is long-winded, shoddily put together and riddled with repetitions and small inconsistencies: characters are introduced twice, facts stated and restated as if for the first time; a pool table appears mid-scene (as if from an earlier ...”

“... Foucault, Althusser, Lyotard – have all had experience of client societies, either in French North Africa or Soviet-ruled Bulgaria, and are out to unmask the Real Thing as a sham. Nick Groom’s book is clearly influenced by some of this thought; but like the counterfeiter it is not exactly out to trumpet its indebtedness, thus appearing rather less of a ...”

“... as in the case of George IV and his giraffe, which was captured as a calf in Sudan and sent north to Khartoum trussed up on the back of a camel. From there she was sent by boat to Cairo, on to Malta and then to England, where she arrived in June 1827 and was taken to Windsor. The king had her fed on a supposedly nourishing diet of milk, ordered a warm ...”

“... through the Cabinet Office? Was it also a mistake to give the new permanent secretary at DExEU, Oliver Robbins, an additional role as a ‘sherpa’, an advance man for the upcoming negotiations with Brussels and the EU 27, reporting back directly not to his own secretary of state, David Davis, but to the prime minister? The magnitude of Brexit is daunting ...”

“... involves placing Asia and the rising sun at the top and disregarding the compass point of the North. Once in India, Roe had to quickly reconsider the likelihood of England’s being feared as ‘a terror to all nations’. The Mughal emperor ruled around a hundred million people. A few years earlier, an EIC merchant called William Hawkins had fairly ...”

“... circulation and advertising systems for mid-sized newspapers owned by Thomson Reuters throughout North America; and, best of all, pre-internet matchmaking software to be installed in kiosks and used by lonely hearts.A few years after I left Andersen, the company changed its name to Accenture. A commercial dispute had begun between Andersen Consulting and its ...”

“... not far from Pristina. Like the other enclaves and the bigger swathe of Serb-inhabited territory north and west of the Ibar river, Gracanica voted in the Serbian elections. The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) and the Kosovo Albanian government in Pristina were unhappy about the Kosovo Serbs casting votes in local elections under ...”

“... was handed to Ceylon’s elite on a platter. ‘Think of Ceylon as a little bit of England,’ Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the first native governor-general, said. This was a point of pride. Don Stephen Senanayake, the country’s first prime minister, remarked: ‘There has been no rebellion in Ceylon, no non-cooperation movement and no fifth column. We ...”

“... Bild-Zeitung joined the campaign. It isn’t surprising that ten years later a book such as Oliver Nachtwey’s Germany’s Hidden Crisis could be a bestseller there. The debate over Agenda 2010 defines modern Germany, much as Thatcherism once did in the UK. Supporters of Agenda 2010, who are given a fairer hearing by Hassel and Schiller than by ...”

“... entirely by the film’.Billy Casper would not have been altogether out of place in David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948). His physical meagreness identifies him from the outset as an archetypal waif. He’s about to leave school and has no prospects apart from the mine which employs his elder brother, Jud (Freddie Fletcher); there might not even be a job ...”

“... the famous Room 40 at the Admiralty. Some of that group were still active in 1939; in particular Oliver Strachey, ‘Dilly’ Knox (whose work on the Abwehr version of Enigma is described in the book) and Commander Denniston, who became the first head of Bletchley. Already in 1938, Denniston had started to seek out the mathematicians, scholars and chess ...”

“... the events leading up to the Civil War, whatever one’s interpretation of them, was very great. Oliver Cromwell if anything does worse. He is apparently approved of as ‘one of the truly dynamic personal forces in English history’, but why he should be is left for the reader to guess. Ashton’s treatment of his leading personalities is very similar to ...”

“... for rulers came when religious sentiment conflicted with dynastic or mercantile priorities. Even Oliver Cromwell, so solicitous of Protestant sufferings in Ireland and Piedmont and Silesia, grasped that Protestant diplomatic initiatives might threaten England’s access to vital markets in the Baltic. Most Protestant princes wanted national churches, their ...”

“... that any social irruption could have produced any better or more effective public servants than Oliver Franks, Edwin Plowden, Robert Hall, Edward Bridges, Alec Cairncross, Edward Hall-Patch, Richard Hopkins and Roger Makins, to name only a few of the ‘mandarins’ who served the Labour Government so loyally. Therein lay the problem, however. They did what ...”