A job at the Sudan Civil Service, for instance, required either a first-class degree, or a Blue plus a second

Wisden had been among the first to question the true merit of university cricket, removing its traditional list of Oxbridge blues in 1993. Matthew Engel, the editor, was widely condemned; one critic observed he was a "political scientist from Manchester University". But Engel, with some justification, felt the roll call had become the "biggest anachronism in the book". He added: "even the Oxford Mail and Cambridge Evening News stopped sending reporters."

A Blue had once denoted more than a first-class career: it opened doors. A job at the Sudan Civil Service, for instance, required either a first-class degree, or a Blue plus a second - which is how Guy Pawson, Oxford's captain in 1910, got in.

D. Pringle,' 'The end of first-class university cricket', L.Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2021), 116

It is not possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game

'I have laid down two rules for the country: first, not to smite the partridge; for if I feed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau. The squire never reads, but it is not possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game.

H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 161

In Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal;

'Let us ask, too, if the Bible is universally diffused in Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal; we who, in fifty years, have extended our empire from a few acres about Madras, over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and exemplified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable.' 

H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 76

He favoured the ideals (but scarcely one of the actions) of the French Revolution

The general tendency of his sermons was what would then have been called subversive. In other words, he was on the side of humanity against its oppressors. He loved truth better than he loved Dundas, the Tory tyrant of Scotland. He favoured the ideals (but scarcely one of the actions) of the French Revolution; he hated cruelty ad injustice; and he resolutely refused, now and hereafter, to flatter authority in order to secure preferment.

 H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 37

He hated the frenzies of sectarianism even more than the mummeries of Rome

Now nothing is more notable about the generous and joyful impatience of Sydney Smith, than the fact that he hated the frenzies of sectarianism even more than the mummeries of Rome. For him the Methodists were simply madmen; and he said so; which is the ringing note of reality in all his record. He would have said that he was a loyal Anglican parson; his opponents might say he was a Pagan; but he was not only not a Puritan, but he was not a subconscious or submerged or secret Puritan.

G.K. Chesterton, 'Introduction', H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 10 

We see the elite of the Thousand-Year Reich a set of flatulent clowns swayed by purely random influences

This scene, as it is described to us, is perhaps overdrawn; but not improbably. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we have too many accounts of life in that exotic court to doubt the authenticity, in its main lines, even of this. When a staid German general compared Goering to Elagabalus, he. was not exaggerating. In the absolutism, the opulence, and the degeneracy of the middle Roman Empire we can perhaps find the best parallel to the high noonday of the Nazi Reich. There, in the severe pages of Gibbon, we read of characters apparently wielding gigantic authority who, on closer examination, are found to be the pliant creatures of concubines and catamites, of eunuchs and freedmen; and here too we see the elite of the Thousand-Year Reich a set of flatulent clowns swayed by purely random influences. Even Mussolini was embarrassed; but then Mussolini had after all, like Goebbels, a Latin mind; he could never be at home among these cavorting Nibelungs. Goebbels, incidentally, was not present at this Mad Hatter’s tea-party; he was in Berlin, giving orders for the suppression of the revolt.

H. Trevor-Roper, The last days of Hitler (1947, 7th edn. 1995), 29

One felt that somehow it would take more than totalitarian war to put an end to cricket

[H.S. Altham, in 1940] ends by describing a visit to Lord's, sandbags everywhere, the Long Room stripped bare. And yet: "The turf was a wondrous green, old Time on the Grand Stand was gazing serenely at the nearest balloon, and one felt that somehow it would take more than totalitarian war to put an end to cricket."

Since all Wisden  readers obviously enjoyed a classical education, he concluded with a line - in Latin only - from Horace, the poet who had also written the dulce et decorum est mantra that inspired the Great War generals. Altham's choice was more positive: Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit (You may drown in the depths, but it rises the more glorious). So it was for cricket in1940, so it will be 80 years later.

P. Kidd, 'When the cricket stops', L.Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2021), 46-47

The offence of Russia was the existence of Russia

This Eastern policy was essential to Nazism; all other positive aims — the conquest of France or Britain — were subsidiary and incidental to it. The offence of France was its traditional policy of Eastern alliances, which had enabled it, for three centuries, to intervene in Germany. The offence of Britain was its refusal to be content with a maritime supremacy, its insistent tradition of preventing the domination of Europe by a single continental power. But the offence of Russia was the existence of Russia.

H. Trevor-Roper, The last days of Hitler (1947, 7th edn. 1995), 4-5

Every act played from the same repertoire, on the same instruments, in an attempt to capture exactly the same sound

Bluegrass festivals were a pretty weird proposition, all things considered. I tried to imagine a rock festival where everyone was expected to make at least half their set Lynyrd Skynyrd covers. Where every act played from the same repertoire, on the same instruments, in an attempt to capture exactly the same sound. But that’s what people came for. And when the bands weren’t singing old songs, or new songs crafted to sound like old songs, they were singing songs about how no one sang the old songs any more.

We got too far away from Carter and Ralph 

And the love of a sweet mountain girl 

We’re way down below that high lonesome sound 

And a far cry from Lester and Earl … 

I thought of Trevor: I knew that the bluegrass-on-bluegrass phenomenon caused him great irritation, because he regularly complained to me about it. ‘Whenever you turn on the radio there’s all these songs bragging on how great the music used to be,’ he would grumble, ‘and how it isn’t like it was in the old days. And all those bands are playing it like it was in the old days!’

E. John, Wayfaring stranger (2019), loc. 2,180

Why did it choose to confuse its instrumentalists with a ‘Foggy Mountain Special’ and a ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’?

There is one problem with songs that have limited chord structures and basic melodies, and that’s that they can start to sound quite similar. It might have been easier to tell the songs apart – and therefore play the notes in the right order – if they hadn’t, many of them, had such similar names, or covered such similar ground. For instance, there wasn’t just one song about someone ‘going down the road feeling bad’. There were dozens. Every other song seemed to be a hard-luck story about a man who’d worn out the soles of his shoes, and had no money to buy a new pair. Within a couple of hours, I had compassion fatigue. And why did a single musical genre require songs about a ‘Little Cabin Home on the Hill’, a ‘Blue Ridge Cabin Home’, and a ‘Cabin in Caroline’? Why did it need to pay tribute to both a John Hardy and a John Henry? Why did it choose to confuse its instrumentalists with a ‘Foggy Mountain Special’ and a ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’? There weren’t even lyrics to help you tell those last two apart. At one stage I mistook one for the other and caused the musical equivalent of a ten-car pile-up.

E. John, Wayfaring stranger (2019), loc. 343

Politicians and commentators pushed three lines of attack against the immigrant Jews in France

Politicians and commentators pushed three lines of attack against the immigrant Jews in France: that they were taking jobs from the French, that they were Bolshevik revolutionaries determined to destroy France, and that they were diseased criminals.

H. Freeman, House of Glass: The story and secrets of a twentieth-century Jewish family (2020), 80

But Emperor Franz Joseph I had a fondness for the Jewish religion

But Emperor Franz Joseph I had a fondness for the Jewish religion, and under his rule, Austro-Hungarian Jews emerged from the ghettos and became part of society as the emperor gave Jews equal rights, and financed Jewish institutions. This is why there seems to have been such a flourishing of Jewish productivity in the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1848 and 1916, from such people as Theodor Herzl, Stefan Zweig and Sigmund Freud: it’s not that this generation of Jews was uniquely talented compared with previous ones, it’s that they were granted a then unique amount of freedom.

H. Freeman, House of Glass: The story and secrets of a twentieth-century Jewish family (2020), 21

Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now

When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don’t even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don’t want to think about the rest. Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.

E. Ferrante, tr. A. Golstein, My brilliant friend (2011), loc. 244

Two peoples living in a small country hating each other like hell

The British realised, however, that they had burdened themselves with an insoluble problem. ‘The problem of Palestine,’ wrote Britain’s most senior general, ‘[was] the same as the problem of Ireland, namely, two peoples living in a small country hating each other like hell.’ Nor were the Jews showing the gratitude the British expected of them. When the director of military intelligence visited Palestine soon after the riots, it dawned on him that there was no reason to suppose that the Zionists and British would ever be ‘really friendly’. The friendship would ‘only last as long as the Zionist State were dependent on Great Britain for military protection’, he realised. This was an insight that would prove acute.

J. Barr, A Line in the sand (2011), loc. 1,670

Since French was a foreign language for the Russian reader, it is arguable that every translation should keep those sentences in French. Yet none does.

To take a famous example, the opening lines of War and Peace in the original are: 'Eh bien, mon prince' followed by long passages in French spoken by Russians as if it were their normal everyday language. the characters in question are aristocrats who converse with one another in French for reasons of fashion and snobbery - something the linking text (in Russia) makes clear   Ironically the discussion is about the possible invasion of Russia by Napoleon and 'toutes les atrocites de cet Antichrist.'  Since French was a foreign language for the Russian reader, it is arguable that every translation  should keep those sentences in French. Yet none does.

 J. Erdal, Ghosting: a double life (2004), 85-6