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“... inside of the kiosk’. The interior surfaces were of bakelite-faced plywood, and the stainless steel fittings included a pipe or cigarette-rack and a hook for umbrellas. Lavishly furnished or not, however, the phone booth was at once an enclosure and a facility accessible to all and sundry; that is, a health hazard. In August 1906, a ‘call office ...”

“... of Pound’s cage heavy-gauge wire mesh had been replaced by reinforced lengths of the welded steel matting used in the construction of aircraft landing strips. Some wire mesh jutted up from the concrete floor, offering the possibility of suicide. Pound was allowed six blankets and a bucket; he also had a Chinese book and some toilet paper. Psychiatrists ...”

“... of its offices: ‘At this location, 122 Commerce Street, was a very large warehouse owned by John Murphey, who provided support to the slave traders in the city.’ ‘I would have preferred not to have the additional markers,’ the mayor confessed, ‘but I believe they are part of history.’ He agreed to allow them, he said, because they would ...”

“... or Iggy Pop’s The Idiot? Kraftwerk have a track called ‘Numbers’, but I prefer Soft Cell’s John Rechy-inspired single of the same name, one of the great lost 45s of the 1980s, which involves an entirely other (and far less hygienic) form of accounting. And I haven’t even mentioned that other great pre-techno German dance classic, ‘I Feel Love’ by ...”

“... spring of vital elixir. He was excited by the viaduct suspended over an alpine precipice, by steel come to life, by the divine exactitude of calculation. He understood that impressionable archaeologist who, after having cleared the path to as yet unknown tombs and treasures, knocked on the door before entering, and, once inside, fainted with ...”

“... House (where I do not pee). It’s the home of the Lascelles family, an ancestor of which, John Lascelles, blew the gaffe on Catherine Howard, the king’s fifth wife, but was later culled himself in the purge of evangelicals during that dreadful monarch’s last years. I watch two of the now well-established red kites tumbling about the sky above the ...”

“... producing a range of metal goods, and served by the Soho Foundry in Smethwick, in the coal and steel belt of the Black Country. There was ideology and drama here beyond the grim calculations of Manchester mill-owners. The manufactory was ‘reckoned to be the largest factory in the world’, and was ‘built to impress’, with its Palladian façade. It ...”

“... the dreams that attached themselves to him. In choosing ‘a well-rounded life’ as his subtitle, John Campbell risks some obvious jibes about his increasingly portly subject, but he delivers on its promise. It is a persuasive, if at times indulgent, portrait of a life rich in satisfactions. At its heart were a long, close marriage and three children, to ...”

“... There was almost no answering fire.LST 301 was among the first vessels to go ashore, its massive steel doors wide open and its landing ramp fully extended beyond the bow. Major Bill Kerr, commander of 265 Battery and my father’s friend, stood on the lip of the ramp. When he felt the ship’s stern shudder as it scraped the bottom, he stepped forward into ...”

“... 1906 to Russian parents in Ukraine, he witnessed revolution, civil war and famine as a child. The steel town of Kamenskoye, where he spent his childhood, changed hands between Red and Whites several times. His family – skilled working class, not badly off, able to afford nice Sunday suits for the children – briefly retreated to Kursk, in Russia, where ...”

“... and in 1945 the party’s intention to take coal, gas, electricity, the railways, and iron and steel into public ownership was explicitly declared. Nationalisation continued to be a contentious issue throughout most of the period of the Attlee government. But its importance was rhetorically magnified by left and right alike. On the left, the illusion that ...”

“... signified the maturity of Henry’s power, his dynastic grip. The last earl of Lincoln had been John de la Pole, the Yorkist claimant to the throne, killed fighting Henry VII at the battle of Stoke in 1487. His younger brother, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, was executed in 1513; his brother William was securely shut in the Tower; another ...”

“... jewellery, and a six inch long marlin hook dangling around my neck on a length of heavy stainless steel chain. I decorated the set by draping my black leather biker jacket over my chair at the panellists’ table. The jacket had handcuffs on the left shoulder, rainbow freedom rings on the right side lacings, and Queer Nation-style stickers reading SEX ...”

“... into action wearing a cap modified to droop around his ears (he declined to wear a British-style steel helmet), a thick turtleneck sweater, highly polished cavalry boots and, draped around his neck, a seven-foot puce muffler knitted by his mother. He refused to use a gas-mask and was twice lightly gassed, earning two of his 20 citations for wounds and ...”

“... Europe with low-hanging fog and assassinations, and were grateful to be sealed behind glass and steel in ‘a sort of tinned Occident’, as Vesna Goldsworthy put it. There were Easterners, too, who shared this uneasy view; Easterners who never thought of themselves as Easterners, such as my grandmother, Elena, whose horizon was filled with the West, with ...”