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“... is the most touching of romantic shrines. In a grotto below an ancient church lies the tomb of Alexander Griboyedov, the author of Woe from Wit and the inventor of the original angry young man, the unhappy Chatsky. Beside him is his wife, the Georgian princess Nino Chavchavadze. Griboyedov married her in 1828, when she was 16. But only a few months later ...”

“... was played the following year (though Wood dismissed it as ‘an appalling work’); in 1896 Alexander Mackenzie’s Britannia Overture was performed as part of a tribute to Queen Victoria’s reign; and it was repeated in the first week of the 1900 season in a thanksgiving concert to celebrate the victory of imperial troops in South Africa. Both ...”

“... flow by; a long night of chaos and desolation will pass. Those resonant, vatic words come from Alexander Herzen, the Russian democratic exile, and he wrote them shortly after the failure of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe. The old empires had reasserted control. But Herzen knew that 1848 spelled their ultimate doom, even though it was not to come for ...”

“... and Gereshk. One of the main British unit commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe of the Welsh Guards, feared he had neither the men nor the equipment to do the job. The British had so few helicopters, and so many home-made bombs had been planted in the territory, that his men were having to hand-clear mines just to resupply outlying garrisons with ...”