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“... Thousand Million Man-Power (1937), the fifth novel Trevelyan published, is something else again. Robert Thomas, recently graduated from the School of Chemistry and Mathematics at London University, gets a job at Cupid Cosmetics Co. Limited, where they make up ‘great vats of face cream and powder’ from his formulas and pack them, with a lot of frilly ...”

“... This book​ is almost parodically characteristic of Robert Macfarlane’s work. He is a scholar of place – of terrain, terroir, the land – and at times references, sources and citations have bulked uncomfortably large in his writing. Certainly he frequents the countryside at close quarters and often strenuously ...”

“... an accurate clear-headed Cambridge man, spending a life in valuable and unpretentious service’.) Scholarships to Eton and King’s College were followed by a first in Mathematics and a King’s Prize Fellowship – his dissertation for the latter forming the foundation for his later work on the logic of probability. Out of his interest in ‘the ...”

“... Robert Peters​ , né Parkins, wasn’t much to look at. He was ‘a little man with a stiff back who walked like a penguin’. Photographs show him as steeply balding, with a rice puddingy face that glooped onto his dog collar. He was tubby, and got tubbier. But something about him made a certain kind of woman sit up ...”

“... of parts, sought royal approval of his plans. By 1605, it was seen rather as a matter of public service, and an Act of Parliament authorised the City to do the necessary work. Four years later it returned to private enterprise, when the City handed over its public powers to a goldsmith called Hugh Myddelton, whose name still adorns the streets of ...”

“... was parodying a document which still lingered in the British national consciousness: the Field Service Post Card, or Army Form A. 2042, produced during the First World War.A. 2042 was designed to be sent to family or friends at home by those on active service. It began by warning that ‘nothing is to be written on this ...”

“... have​ bad dreams about being back in the army. It’s not that the experience of National Service was entirely unpleasant; indeed some of it was highly enjoyable. But even at the best of times there was a sense of living in an open prison. In my case, this oppressive sense of unfreedom lay in the knowledge that it would be many long months before I ...”

“... hours. About seventy million calls went uncompleted. Three days later the United States Secret Service – an organisation originally set up to protect the President – mounted a nation-wide sweep, targeted in particular at a group calling itself the Legion of Doom. The bombs to which the menacing young man had referred were computer programs, not ...”

“... this did not preclude meddlesome revisions by the so-called ‘modernisers’ in the colonial service. In these territories, settlement by Europeans was on a very modest scale, except for example in Kenya. As the 19th century wore on, colonial enthusiasts bemoaned the unwillingness of the British to come out and ‘make a go’ of India, except in the ...”

“... ex-girlfriend Blair, her now husband Trent, and Julian, now a recovering addict who runs an escort service. He gets involved in casting a movie based on one of his scripts, and falls into an affair with a much younger woman who has auditioned for a part. Though she lacks talent, he promises he’ll get her the job if she will keep sleeping with him. Intruding ...”

“... sanctions were imposed. At the same time, the price of oil continued to collapse across the globe. Service companies like mine are multi-million-dollar multinationals in their own right but they are entirely dependent on the fortunes of the even larger global and state-owned oil companies. When these behemoths decide to tighten their belts, it spells trouble ...”

“... geometric shapes that swung like chain mail as you walked. I sat in the chair while behind me Robert, the senior stylist, cast his professional eye over me, lifting hanks of my long hair with a comb and letting them drop, flicking sections this way and that to see how they fell, examining its possibilities. Finally, he pocketed his comb and with a sigh ...”

“... history, political argument was argument about the past: about precedents and about pedigrees. Sir Robert Cotton, an antiquary in politics, is a perfect focus for a study of the connections between antiquarian research and political conflict. History, an anchor in the choppy seas of political and social change, became to monarchs and parliaments alike the ...”

“... in France under Edward III and the Black Prince, and independently on their own account: Robert Knowles and Hugh Calverley for instance. But none achieved quite such fame or rose quite so high as Sir John Hawkwood, the ‘diabolical Englishman’ of Stonor Saunders’s book, did in Italy. His military achievement and reputation carried him steadily ...”

“... of the British Empire against three major powers in three different theatres of war.’ Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, had put the same point more succinctly three years earlier: ‘We are greatly overlanded.’ We now have ample evidence that, in the 1930s, ministers and their ...”