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“... of France’s fortifications along its eastern border with Germany. Donald and his brother, Peter, are not yet proficient enough in English to understand the text, so Joe translates it into German:The essential points of the French system, which was carried out on a gigantic scale, are as follows: a line of fortified casemates giving each other mutual ...”

“... on Mary Quant miniskirts and draped round the shoulders of Pete Townshend (Patriots is always keen to assert the world-beating quality of British pop). Weight seizes on this, arguing that such ‘promiscuous use’ of the national flag was ‘the most visible sign that the British were reclaiming patriotism from its traditional loci in ...”

“... about what would be best for ‘Jacob’ (Zuma), how ‘Cyril’ (Ramaphosa) was distressingly keen to keep his trade union and civic association jobs while taking over as ANC Secretary-General and, above all, how ‘if we can just get Thabo in, we’re set for the next twenty years.’ (I heard of one business supremo who, in the midst of just such a ...”

“... It has all become too ugly, too personal. Weather can no longer be mentioned in polite society. As Peter Redgrove points out in his provocative study, The Black Goddess and the Sixth Sense, we are ‘so violently affected by weather change ... that it can easily become a clinical problem’. Redgrove confesses himself a ‘Jekyll and Hyde to the weather’. He ...”

“... was one of them. Sampson ignores all manner of glaring indications that this was the case. Why did Peter Mda, one of Mandela’s closest friends, regard him as a secret Communist? Why did Mandela refuse to condemn Stalin even after Khrushchev had? Listen to Slovo on Mandela: ‘ideologically he has taken giant strides ... on die role of the Party in the ...”

“... reading: Whatever might have been Mr Bohun’s fancies when absent from his country, his keen brain, on his return, soon detected the spirit of the Reform Bill. He saw it was a Whig measure, and not a democratic one. He perceived that its only object was to destroy the balance of parties in the state, and that it intrenched in power a party who by ...”

“... to do with the bombings. My attention​ was first drawn to the Birmingham case by my friend Peter Chippendale, who covered the trial for the Guardian. He told me he thought the wrong people had been convicted. It was ten years or so before I began to investigate the matter. In the early 1980s I persuaded Carmen Callil at Chatto and Windus to commission ...”

“... Apollinaire in the seat of honour as the ‘impresario of the avant-garde’. More recently Peter Read has explored in rich and rewarding detail the complex relationship between Apollinaire and Picasso, illustrating the way the ‘creative dialogue’ between them ‘fostered and inspired some of their finest art and poetry’. Apollinaire’s ...”

“... the Villa attracted the Deux Magots crowd of a Sunday). Varian Fry remembered a ‘dyspeptic but keen-minded old Bolshevik . . . At the house he talked for hours about his experiences in Russian prisons . . . or discussed the ramifications and interrelations of the European secret police . . . Listening to him was like reading a Russian novel.’ Mary Jayne ...”

“... in the fight against Islamist extremism’, he said, Egypt was a crucial ally and the UK was ‘keen to expand practical partnerships’. Cameron urged the president ‘to ensure human rights are respected’; he was much more specific on the point that Egyptian state debts to Britain’s international oil companies should be promptly repaid. The British ...”

“... Anthony Deane said Petty’s design ‘must needs prove a folly’. The navy commissioner Peter Pett told Pepys that the double-hulled ship was ‘the most dangerous thing in the world’: if it was successful, the secret would get out, and it would be the ruin of English trade and sea power. The Dutch, with whom England was about to fight the second ...”

“... driven, totalising identity. As such, it looks very much like a subset of race. Maine was a keen admirer of the Roman Empire, which endured for six hundred years; Britain’s empire was shorter-lived. The British and other European empires were organised quite differently from the Roman Empire. Not only was there no physical contiguity between modern ...”

“... Office staff board flights for Quito and the Ecuadorian government checks every safety mechanism, keen to avoid any misunderstandings with the British. Meanwhile the high-level Syrian emails now being released by WikiLeaks are proof that Assange isn’t twiddling his thumbs. Western surveillance technology companies and defence contractors will feature ...”

“... of political muscle? Take one of the best-known arguments in contemporary moral philosophy: Peter Singer’s attempt to prove that there is no ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ when it comes to suffering in a globalised world. Singer first made his case in 1971, in response to the humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh. The core of the argument is ...”

“... travelling in Italy with her parents; he was the family’s doctor in Rome. They had two children, Peter and Malcolm, and remained technically married until his death in 1949, though they spent very little time together and he saw almost nothing of his sons as they were growing up. ‘There seems to have been no question of passionate love on Axel’s ...”