“... drink(s) in exchange for a mint copy of Giles Goatboy, or of swopping some multi-volume reissue of John Cowper Powys for a night out on the town. The Chancery Lane idea is (or used to be) that you can sell off review copies for half their published price. The books had to be in really good condition (hence the loving care with which one would sometimes see a ...”

“... Trevor’s Tom and David Profumo’s James are simply – or not quite simply – innocents. John Fuller’s Hugh Howard, in Tell it me again, is much older – in his late forties – but acceptably an innocent abroad. Abroad is America. Hugh is an English composer, talented and successful, but a bit of a cold fish. In this sense, Fuller’s is another ...”

“... Clwyd County Council (now disbanded) and conducted by a high-powered team of three experts led by John Jillings, a former director of social services in Derbyshire. That inquiry concluded that ‘appalling’ sexual abuse went on for years in homes throughout the area. Jillings’s report was so devastating that Michael Beloff, a QC who specialises in ...”

“... of Labour during the Spanish Civil War. She was also active in the women’s movement, and took part in the protest against the Miss World contest at the Albert Hall in 1970.The inquiry has shown that the SDS focused on ‘extreme left-wing’ groups, Trotskyists in particular: ‘the International Socialists, who became the SWP in 1977; the ...”

“... be found trying to poison Lincoln while making up his ‘blue mass’, a medicine the President took for his constipation. But most readers, of course, will already know that Lincoln has four more years to live before he is shot by Herold’s friend, John Wilkes Booth, the most notorious of all those Americans who have ...”

“... When John Muir, the son of an emigrant from East Lothian to southern Wisconsin, was 16, in 1855, his father lowered him daily down a well shaft on their new farm at Hickory Hill. John cut with chisel and hammer through fine-grained sandstone until he struck ‘a fine, hearty gush of water ...”

“... and Censor’. St Clair quotes Eldon in 1793, when he was only attorney general and called Sir John Scott, telling an author that he could continue to publish his reply to Burke in ‘an octavo form so as to confine it probably to that class of readers who may consider it coolly’ (that is, people who would be unlikely to approve of it), but that as soon ...”

“... cent of the population had been born in the New Commonwealth. The National Front’s candidate, John Fairhurst, had stood in nearby Hayes and Harlington in the two 1974 elections. He wasn’t standing in Southall in the hope of securing a high vote, but because the NF thought putting up a candidate there would get them publicity. On 23 April, 2875 police ...”

“... the morning by way of Honister old quarry and consigned his dust to that hummocky moorland. When I took on Haystacks and its cliffs for the Fell & Rock Climbers’ guidebook to Buttermere eight years ago, I tried to evoke the bristling stature of the place, drawing on my own experience of its trickling and collapsing gullies, which few people have ...”

“... streak. Eager to join Napoleon’s army at Boulogne for the famous invasion of England that never took place, he arrived late in 1804, delayed by political intrigue. With little to do, he was dispatched on light duties around the local towns. Among his tasks was to look after some British internees who had been concentrated in Valenciennes after the Treaty of ...”

“... aspects of one another: a triple-headed monster, like Cerberus. Short historical digression: it took a while for this system to spread everywhere, especially in the United States, where arguments about the link between the banks and the state and the money system have been a recurring theme. In How Would You Like to Pay, a lucid short book on new money ...”

“... turn in the tide of battle prevented a worse catastrophe than Hiroshima. In March 1985, Vanunu took his camera into the Dimona plant and systematically photographed it. How he was able to do so remains an important question for Israeli state security, celebrated so often (with the help of its own propaganda machine) as ruthlessly efficient. At any rate, by ...”

“... By chance, the evening I took this book to bed for the painful reading expected, I jabbed the tooth of a comb down a fingernail and cried out. As a reminder of what Klaus Barbie was about, not just at the Hotel Terminus in Lyon forty years ago but at the Bolivian Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters in La Paz as late as 1980, the moment served ...”

“... by side (the so-called ‘Two Emperors’ style) imply that co-operation resumed, but the Vikings took over the wealthy and well-populated eastern Midlands (the Danelaw), leaving Ceolwulf in control of only western Mercia. His reign ended after five years.That Ceolwulf was recognised as king is consistent with his issuing coins. London, where Mercian coins ...”

“... and Zionist activist (she was Golda Meir’s best friend and a primary mentor to the young men who took over the New Republic in the 1970s). Reznikoff refused to accompany her on her many trips to postwar Europe, Palestine, and later Israel – explaining that he hadn’t finished exploring Central Park – but happily went to the meetings and fundraising ...”