“... Lincoln: that would change everything. But Lincoln knew how politically divisive it would be at home to turn the war into an abolitionist cause. As the Economist observed, with only some hyperbole, ‘the great majority of the people in the Northern states detest the coloured population even more than do the Southern whites.’ In October 1861, when General ...”

“... and two files of musketeers tramp into the House. While they are taking up their positions, the Lord General is still stumping up and down, abusing MPs who catch his eye. ‘You, sir, are a drunkard, and some of you are whoremasters’ (he’s looking at Henry Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth). Then he points to the Speaker up in his chair: ‘Fetch him ...”

“... largely unchallenged. Then, quite suddenly, things began to change. In 1772, the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, issued the famous Somerset Decision, which was taken to have outlawed slavery on English soil. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce began their campaign against the slave trade. Parliament eventually voted to end the trade in 1807; the ...”

“... opened fire at several buses – some full of students, one carrying football players coming home from a match. Six people were killed. By midnight, 43 more students had disappeared, or, rather, had been forcibly disappeared. That’s where the story fades to grey. The Mexican government at first claimed that the police had handed the students over to a ...”

“... service. Marriage usually meant children and domestic duties. Pym settled back into her parents’ home in Oswestry, the country town in Shropshire where her father was a solicitor and her mother an assistant church organist. She bought a typewriter and started another high-spirited comedy, Crampton Hodnet, set among scholars, spinsters and clergy. The agent ...”

“... Sylvia Beach said that Americans came to the Left Bank for two things they couldn’t get at home, alcohol and Ulysses, but they also came for the cafés, the galleries, the nightlife. Butch women could be found dancing and drinking at Le Monocle at a time when dressing in men’s clothing was technically a crime – in photographs taken by Brassaï they ...”

“... extent she was playing a part in her books. But it’s also clear, reading them, that she was at home in theatres, where several of her books are set. It’s obvious, too, that she idealised a kind of Englishness, and that her own writing was stimulated by English contemporaries like Sayers and Christie.Marsh named her detective, Roderick Alleyn, after the ...”

“... and nervous ghost’, with a nice husband who said: ‘ “We daren’t leave Mrs Carr at home because she is so mischievous – so we have to take her with us.” But he got her in the drawing-room and took her hand gently when no one was looking.’ He had as keen an eye for a ceremony as Edward VII had for decorations. Anyone who has ever organised ...”

“... muck (it looks like a pig’s back). We stare out along the coast to Tory Island, the home of the great naive painter, James Dixon. Below us Donegal is green, still, silent and peaceful. I’m too tired that evening to open either Himself Alone or The Idiot, and in any case I want to a make a start on a new book, a collection of short essays on ...”

“... good enough to die in’. She does this by concentrating, like Laetitia Pilkington, on Swift ‘at home’. This is Swift in his country parish, Laracor in County Meath, cutting and planting his willows: ‘cultivating half an acre of Irish bog’, he said when writing to a friend in England, but Glendinning makes it sound as though he relished his ...”

“... would sit, white-knuckled, fingers digging into the scarlet leather, until they made it safely home to Poplar. They piled into the nearest boozer and pitched back the doubles until they could lift a shot glass without spilling half of its contents. The ride to the tunnel haunts Kray foot-soldier Tony Lambrianou like a psychogeographical nightmare. The ...”

“... press will describe it as an impenetrable nether region of ancient hatreds; the next it will be home to swinging multi-cultural Sarajevo at the heart of Europe. In one sense, the Prime Minister is right: Kosovo is on the doorstep. Europe will never allow it in. The West’s determination to keep most of the Albanian refugees in miserable conditions in ...”

“... taking friends on cruises in the Mediterranean and along the coast of Italy, and, on the return home, to steam out to pick his party up when the White Star liner reached New York Harbor. Morgan’s character as a deal-maker is apparent in non-business as well as business transactions. Among the more amusing episodes in the biography is Strouse’s account ...”

“... final phase of its construction. Since 1568, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had been made lord of Kenilworth in 1563, had been pouring money into the castle so it would be fit to accommodate the queen. Elizabeth visited in 1566, 1568 and 1572, but he didn’t finish his alterations until the last and most lavish display of hospitality in 1575. Among ...”

“... spokesperson most often put up, particularly on television, is the junior minister at the Home Office, Hazel Blears. With a name that combines both blur and smear and which would have delighted Dickens the lady in question has always shown herself to be an unwavering supporter of Mr Blair, though lacking those gestures in the direction of humanity ...”