“... the World Economic Conference in London, and went with de Jouvenel, Drieu la Rochelle and other young idealists to Berlin for a gruesome attempt at a Franco-German rapprochement. That’s about half of what she did. The writing, quoted here, seems already as concrete, intense and precise as it would ever be. Although she had the self-made woman’s disdain ...”

“... invasion of Cambodia – into towns under the nominal jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Young men distributed dry sticks of olive wood to dip into a barrel of fire. In Arabic and English, white banners proclaimed ‘Jerusalem is also holy for Palestinians’ and ‘History repeats itself: yesterday Nero, today Sharon.’ Torches alight and banners ...”

“... seems to have been a moment when James wasn’t Jamesian – at once vividly recognisable as a young child and identical, often comically so, with the ageing novelist now telling his story. The most unlikely incidents serve to anticipate his future self, as when he identifies the memory of ‘a very big Newfoundland dog on whose back I was put to ...”

“... establish a seat of learning. ‘Father, I want you to build a university for the benefit of poor young men,’ he declares in the most affecting version, ‘so they can have the same advantages the rich have.’ For several months he remained physically with his distraught parents, pausing at select mortuaries as they made their way slowly back to the ...”

“... last years of his life. It was then given to the Benslow Music Trust which provides violins for young players.23 February. I love jokes and used to be fed them almost on a weekly basis by Barry Cryer, as one of his extensive and distinguished clientele that included Judi Dench and Andrew Marr. He would ring up and without bothering to say who it was would ...”

“... of the local terror. The powerful role of the Politburo in the Great Purge is again made clear in David Hoffman’s chapter on Moscow. According to Hoffman, ‘the tone of party committee meetings at factories changed overnight’ after a secret letter had been received passing on the Politburo’s directive to root out all Trotskyists. In last autumn’s ...”

“... central part of French consciousness and the preoccupation of writers such as Hugo and Dumas. The young Berlioz worshipped her from afar, but so intensely that he nearly had a mental breakdown. She became the inspiration and programme of the Symphonie Fantastique. Eventually he married her. But by the time he was introduced to his idée fixe it was too ...”

“... Unionists as parochial know-nothings. Revisionist historians, most prominently Ian McBride and David Livingstone, have demonstrated that the history of Ulster Presbyterianism from the 18th century is characterised by intellectual richness, an openness to science, a commitment to progress and a taste for theological heterodoxy, notwithstanding backwoods ...”

“... realm of the airport showed up as an orange nimbus against the purple night sky. In the morning, David Cameron was holding an emergency press conference on the television stuck in the top left-hand corner of the breakfast room: ‘Work is at the heart of a responsible society,’ he politely hectored the assembled hacks, while we sloped off on our walking ...”

“... by the records of Raymond Firth’s study of Bermondsey in 1947-49 and 1958-59, and Michael Young and Peter Willmott’s studies of Bethnal Green and Essex in 1953 and 1955. He then turns to Raphael Samuel’s interviews in Stevenage in 1959-60 and John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood’s surveys in Cambridge and Luton ...”

“... author the right to pontificate on the final page. ‘ “Our prerogatives as men,” wrote the young Auden, “Will be cancelled who knows when ... ?”, if we cannot radically alter our relationships with public power; but neither a transformed nor a reformed public realm will be worth having if individual creative values do not flourish, indeed fructify ...”

“... world in which for armchair socialists ‘a kaffir remained a kaffir’ and describes how, as a young Communist, he himself was acutely uncomfortable, at his first meeting of the Junior Left Book Club, to find himself seated between black youths. Gradually, as a real commitment to racial equality grew, these ...”

“... as well as a Momentum branch flag and a ‘Women for Corbyn’ banner. The crowd was largely young and white, but there was an older generation too – veterans of the struggle. Behind me a young man who had come with his mother dipped into a Waitrose bag and – perhaps eager to pre-empt the charge of champagne ...”

“... only made public on Minnie’s 17th birthday in 1858, during which Edward supervised his young cousin’s education and demanded she come up to scratch as a correspondent (‘Minnie is a most affectionate creature but from her letters one could scarcely think so’), they were married in 1859. The wedding night and honeymoon, according to ...”

“... human and to be active. Perhaps the slogan should be rephrased ‘right to rites’. For what the young unemployed in our increasingly atomised society miss out on is the rites of passage, the seasonal rituals, the means of self-definition provided by sub-cultures. In The Historical Meanings of Work, Patrick Joyce and his contributors concern themselves with ...”