“... may think, his popularity is not confined to the plebeian sections of the city: many middle-class students are searching for extreme solutions in the guise of religion, and not just in Lahore. This city, more than any other, is an accurate guide to what is going on in the rest of the country, because Pakistan, since the defection of Bangladesh, is ...”

“... Like many people, he prides himself on describing things as they really are.As the Cold War drew to a close, his patience with politicians and writers of the left had begun to wear thin. The LRB, which appeared to be moving leftward (in reality, Britain had moved to the right), stayed with him, and tossed him some meaty bones, which he gnawed ...”

“... just one worker into the SWP’s inner ranks. Trotsky’s prediction that the Second World War would end in massive workers’ revolts had failed to materialise. The decision of GM workers in 1948 to accept a contract forbidding them from going on strike, Biehl writes, demonstrated to Bookchin once and for all that [the working-...”

“... in another paragraph about ‘the darkest period of public anti-communism, the years of the Korean War’. Hobsbawm mentions being ‘acutely unhappy’ in the early 1950s but skitters away from any further revelations. He reminds himself of the difference between historical and autobiographical questions and then hares off to tackle the former. This means ...”

“... creation of utopia – otherwise defined as the end of history, or the full victory of the working class. If history does not know its script, it must be forced to act as if it did, dragged by the scruff of its neck towards an always glorious, but always receding climax. As W.H. Auden remarked in another context, those leaders who believe in the possibility of ...”

“... by seeing himself as a lucky convergence of opposite forces and tendencies: ‘Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me… . The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation is to absorb all the traditions [and all the] classes; make them mine, me theirs.’ So the ...”

“... people, they were as isolated from the majority of the population as they were from the ruling class that had produced most of them. But there was a much broader web of sympathisers and donors, often inspired by sensationalist depictions of revolutionaries in the press. Without those sympathisers, there would have been no movement. It was the ...”

“... on, but in a different way – the clubs stopped being places where young and old of a similar class would join forces. Many of the sports dwindled, musicians disbanded, evening classes were often dropped by institutes for lack of interest. You can’t complain, really. Bach generation wants to burn down the churches of its parents. There’s nothing wrong ...”

“... stayed behind in Baghdad when Armageddon was scheduled to begin, was the civilian hero of the Gulf War. The only thing that may have puzzled them was his title. How could a man edit reports coming from all quarters of the globe if he deliberately isolated himself under conditions of siege? On this matter From the House of ...”

“... things, giving the impression of a camera left running long after the event proper has finished. War’s inglorious aftermath preoccupies several of the recent books, the years 1919 and 1946 in particular. In Desolate Heaven (1997), Peacetime (2002) and The Kingdom of Ashes (2007) are populated with men and women bewildered and resentful at having been ...”

“... On 30 July 1914, it suddenly dawned on Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany was on the threshold of a war with three great powers. Panicking, he grabbed a recently arrived dispatch from St Petersburg and committed his agonised thoughts to paper in a frenzy of marginal scribbles. England was the author of Germany’s predicament, he scrawled ...”

“... himself into a quest for Nazi favour and patronage and allowed no realistic assessment of the war’s probable outcome to call it into question. Degrelle’s campaign for recognition as the Nazis’ most useful partner in Francophone Belgium went through several stages. At the beginning, he was very much an outsider. Reeder, who never had much use for the ...”

“... Woolf occur in the original script and the visit to the country house on the eve of the First War, but these are presented as the memories of Hugh and Moggie, the upper-class couple who sit out the Second World War in the basement of Claridge’s. The transitions in time and the ...”

“... in the Polish city of Lodz and ends with another. The 45 years between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of a free, non-communist Poland separate them. But the younger women have decided to start again at the point where their elders left off – and to avoid their mistakes. In 1945, the main railway station in Lodz, like most Polish ...”

“... to the Revolution would be found supporting the Popular Front in 1936. Even the ravages of war were unable to alter deeply-rooted habits of electoral behaviour. When the first elections in the German Federal Republic were held in 1949, it was discovered that patterns of support for Christian, conservative and socialist parties mirrored almost exactly ...”