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“... reconstruction and renewal. When, in May, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces launched an assault on the northern Jaffna peninsula, which had for two years been almost entirely controlled by the main Tamil militant organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE), nobody could have foreseen imminent peace. So bleak and featureless was the political ...”

“... College, and for four and a half years from January 1934 stayed at Ingleton House, a boys’ home in Clapham run by the Anglican Society of the Good Shepherd, and wrote poems, comic operas and humorous essays in the Ingletonian Raconteur. Revelling in the works of Blake, Ruskin and Samuel Palmer, he was inspired by the idea that ‘reality is a thing ...”

“... for him to renege on his manifesto commitment to hold it, as part of the price of remaining in office. The deep public anxiety that drove the Leave vote – especially about uncontrolled immigration – would not have gone away. Nor would the appeal of Ukip. But both would have had to be channelled through less ...”

“... one-man band’ no longer held true. It used to be Labour that could campaign on its record in office. But now, for the first time, it was Labour – stripped of leadership talent by internal vendettas and the lure of Westminster – that seemed unfamiliar, untried. The ancient weapon thought so lethal even a month ago ...”

“... Harold Macmillan, we certainly need it for the life of a lesser prime minister, Lord O’ Neill of Northern Ireland. This is the man, we are reminded, who on retirement said: ‘It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house, they will live like Protestants … they will refuse to have 18 ...”

“... the failure to resolve this issue has led and is leading to repeated catastrophes.’ Nearer home, the continued intractability of the Northern Ireland conflict has led Simon Jenkins, in the Spectator, to condemn the current initiative by the British and Irish Governments to hold new talks on the province for its ...”

“... linked Parnell to the murder in 1882 of two leading members of the British Administration in Ireland.) The Commission was a ruse devised to destroy Parnell’s reputation, and one into which I am sorry to say three judges allowed themselves to be cajoled. The Special Commission Act 1888 explicitly named the three who were assigned to the task: Sir James ...”

“... the children’, with furious oratory at Westminster (sneered at as ‘pink’ by Maclean back home). He told how his own wife had lost her life struggling to save her baby’s. He denounced as ‘murderers’ those who voted to withdraw milk from the list of entitlements to mothers and children. In 1932, he led the ILP out of the Labour Party. Jennie Lee ...”

“... shut down; more than half of those out of work are not entitled to unemployment benefits. As in Ireland, the twentysomethings are looking for work abroad, a return to the patterns of emigration that helped lock their countries into conservatism and underdevelopment for so long. Why has the crisis taken such a severe form in Europe? Part of the answer lies ...”

“... Disunity and Sleaze) as Major’s was. But chickens can, after all, take some time to come home to roost, as they did after even the monumental hubris of the Thatcher-Lawson era. 23 June. Characteristically-worded letter from Karl Miller, who never reads the LRB since he ceased to edit it but having heard about my Diary asked if I would send him a ...”

“... because of his race, but horizontal racism has largely disappeared in the US. These days, a white office worker generally has no problem with a black office worker – though poor blacks, of course, remain an alien Other, and an institutionalised racism ...”

“... Murdoch appointed as editor of the Sun Sir (as he then wasn’t) Larry Lamb, the Yorkshire-born Northern Editor of the Daily Mail. Between them Lamb and Murdoch devised a newspaper which filled the gap created by what they saw as the increasingly stuffy and out-of-touch nature of the Daily Mirror. Their re-imagined Sun hit the streets as a tabloid newspaper ...”

“... of Churchill’s decision in 1940 to set up SOE under a minister independent of the Foreign Office, which supervised SIS. The Permanent Under-Secretary of the FO, Sir Alexander Cadogan, held regular meetings with the heads of SOE and SIS (or their deputies) in order to reconcile differences. His chairmanship, which ...”

“... to support beginning in the late autumn of 2001 – a federation of Massoud’s organisation [the Northern warlords], exiled intellectuals and royalist Pashtuns – was available for sponsorship a decade before, but the United States could not see a reason then to challenge the alternative, radical Islamist vision promoted by Pakistani and Saudi intelligence ...”

“... in the 1965 leadership election, a blow from which Maudling never recovered. It was the same at home; indeed, Baston argues persuasively that this was where the trouble began. Maudling’s father – another Reggie – was an actuary, comfortably off, and amusing and generous. But his mother, Elsie, was tough, domineering and status-driven, and Maudling, an ...”