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“... that he should part company off California to see if he could find the western end of the North-West Passage; and two smaller vessels, the Dainty and the Black Pinnace. No one can deny that Cavendish was a brave and enterprising man; but he does not seem to have been a very estimable one in other respects. He carried thumb-screws to make prisoners ...”

“... Dickens’s few excursion outside London – based on Preston, as some believe? It hardly matters. North and South? Skirts drawn up around Manchester, set in ‘Milton’. In Hardy, the faux-archaism of ‘Wessex’ and its cod-toponyms – Casterbridge, Melchester, Christminster and the rest – belong with the faux-mythology of the fates, though in this ...”

“... great events he would trace in the next quarter-century include the rise and rapid fall of the Fox-North coalition; the 1784 election, which ushered in the long reign of Pitt the Younger; the madness of George III and the consequent Regency Crisis; the premonition of war and the actual wars with revolutionary France and then with Napoleon. But when you read ...”

“... in on territory that doesn’t, strictly speaking, belong to them. Carolyn, in stately exile in North London, calls into question the eternal present-tense rush of On the Road. They can’t both be true, not at the same time. That plural consciousness is too much to accept. But Carolyn is, self-evidently, very much alive, and feels obliged, as a duty, to ...”

“... time took the opposing view. Let’s see now. An unstable fantasy-merchant signs up as an agent of Joseph Stalin. He lives a series of lies for almost a decade, and cultivates the habits and practices of deception. He then tries to go straight, and denounces his former comrades. But he steadfastly denies that Communists and fellow-travellers were involved in ...”

“... My first thoughts, in connection with suits, are of Lucky Lucan, Joseph Beuys and the Thin White Duke, at the head of an imaginary horde of accountants, dandies, clubland heroes, zoot-suiters and funeral directors. It has taken me some time to realise that the question of suits is indeed a crucial question, not only about fashion but about sexual identity, national culture and art history ...”

“... in the presence of the husband of the monarch in a centre of metropolitan science. If – in Joseph Priestley’s over-quoted phrase – the rotten English hierarchy had ‘equal reason to tremble even at an air pump’, these shudders might be stilled by a spark coil or a Faraday cage. Despite this, Faraday was not a Tory. Throughout his career he took ...”

“... changed. By the end of the war, he said, the Germans had almost crushed the Resistance in the north: ‘It was dying on its feet, but in the south we were going from strength to strength.’ Having somehow completed his teaching qualifications, he got an assistant’s post at the University of Rennes in 1945, but he was desperate to get back to French ...”

“... works well, not least because the background is in itself a subject of considerable interest. The North Country of the later 18th century was not, in any limited sense, provincial. If anything, its remoteness from the capital seems to have encouraged intellectual independence and a willingness to experiment among people like the Loshes who took ideas ...”

“... or meditation in church and home. With the appearance of Luther, the age of the cult image in north-eastern Europe came to an end: art, it seemed, was about to be eliminated by the word of God. The Kingdom of Christ, Luther declared, ‘is a hearing kingdom, not a seeing kingdom: for the eyes do not lead and guide us to where we know and find Christ, but ...”

“... in South American politics – apart perhaps from worrying about the imperious interventions of North Americans, so eager to counter the threat of Communism in their hemisphere. Huneeus stimulated an interest in such matters which persisted in Gould until the Chilean’s premature death in the Eighties. Gould then travelled to Chile, hoping to discover what ...”

“... uproar against him was at its fiercest, Genovese, then at Rutgers, went even farther north – to teach in Montreal, until his return to Rochester University in upper New York State. (He is currently teaching in Atlanta.) His first book, The Political Economy of Slavery (1965), could be read as an attack on Southern 19th-century ...”

“... not necessarily inimical to the spirit of efficiency. James Martens sees a divergence between a North of England rugby infused with the competitiveness and emphasis on success of the entrepreneurial class which ran it, and a Southern game played for comradeship, fun and character-building by clubs based on occupational or educational affiliation or ...”

“... the Christian south might be collaborating with Western powers to limit population growth in the north. All attempts by the federal government to dispel the rumours through reports by technical committees failed. Eventually the boycott was ended after dialogue with political and religious leaders in the north; and after ...”

“... but Middlesbrough has the highest rates of sexual crime and violence against the person in the North-East. It’s almost as bad as Hackney, where I live. Middlesbrough hasn’t weathered the recession well. In a recent study of local authorities’ ability to cope with the coming cuts, Middlesbrough turned out to be the most vulnerable place in the ...”