Rob

“English was a complex hybrid of Anglo-Saxon and Norse, with a strong overlay of Norman-French, and was difficult for outsiders to learn fluently because of its consequent lack of linguistic logic.”
― Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell: A Life

“By then tensions were rising in Palestine. Almost exactly twenty-five years earlier, in the hope of creating what it called ‘a buffer Jewish state’ to guard the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal and keep the French at bay, the British government of the day had issued the Balfour Declaration, named after the then foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour. This pledged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine so long as it did not impinge on the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities there. It helped Britain secure the mandate to rule Palestine in 1920.”
― James Barr, Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

“What was that Poe quote that Lydia liked so much? I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity. The ducks and the pond are well behind me now.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“The hour of courage has struck on the clock …’, ran Anna Akhmatova’s poem at that moment when the very existence of Russia appeared to be in mortal danger.”
― Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943