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“... and myths. I’ve even been told, by a country grocer, that I couldn’t buy eggs in a brown paper-bag any more ‘because of the Common Maaarket’. Perhaps it’s natural for a latecomer to the Community to feel uncomfortable, struggling to get alterations in a ready-made suit of policies which feels rather a tight fit. Moral: be a founder-member ...”

“... many more bouncers and to alter his line of attack away from leg stump to that of the batsman, Bill Voce’ – his bowling partner and Nottinghamshire colleague –’ following suit. As they did so, Jardine moved more fielders across to the leg side and by the close of the innings in my opinion Bodyline had been born.’ So there it was: the triumph ...”

“... shone like a tray of diamonds. Lloyd George got the message of that day. And the Rent Restrictions Bill was not long in marking the books. Effie liked to say they had given Lloyd George something to talk about. They gave him a subject: housing. But Effie was like Lloyd George in that way. She had needed something too. The women of Govan gave her a subject; a ...”

“... he said, “I want a new one.” The one he wanted cost £900. We bought it.’Nicholas Paget-Brown​ , who was then the leader of the council, lives alone not far from the Fulham Road. His gentle manners precede him, in the style of a decently prepped, slightly fogeyish man of the 1950s, and he acts as if he might find the modern world fascinating were ...”

“... are born. Are we really free? Or is free-will and responsibility an illusion? In July 1978, Louise Brown precipitated and focused some of these concerns. She was born after an entirely normal pregnancy, but from a conception that took place in a laboratory dish. Moral or not? Legal or not? Playing God? Her existence was made possible by the work of Patrick ...”

“... on too many a wearisome evening in the theatre. I have never been bored by Osborne – well, by Bill Maitland a little, but that was meant. I often disagree with his plays but invariably find his tone of voice, however hectoring, much more sympathetic than the rage or the patronising ‘Oh dear, he’s at it again’ he still manages to provoke in an ...”

“... Representation. Another 23 per cent favour a Scottish Assembly and 34 per cent support a Bill of Rights. The adulation with which Mrs Thatcher was received by the party faithful, together with the somewhat mythical concept of ‘Thatcherism’, tended to disguise the extent to which Conservative ideas were a mishmash. The authors detect three ...”

“... at a washstand with ewers and professing mystification as to its function. A comic book about the Brown Family at the Crystal Palace showed Cannibal Islanders in native dress sitting opposite the family at table and asking greedily how much they wanted for little Johnny, under a sign saying ‘Soup à la Hottentot’. A spoof report on a visit to the ...”

“... four years. They haven’t spelled out how they are going to do it, and until recently Gordon Brown was talking about ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’ – which, given what he must know about what the figures mean, is jaw-droppingly cynical. The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to cuts of ...”

“... president alone. To head the CIA Obama picked Leon Panetta, a former congressman who had served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Panetta was a complete outsider to the world of spies: it could have been predicted that he would be overawed by the company he now kept and come to defend their actions present and past with the anxiety of someone who has to ...”

“... fact, as the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, it possessed all the ‘moral grandeur of a bill of lading’. It contained no criticism of slavery and did not free all slaves; the legal status of at least 800,000 slaves was not affected. The proclamation did not free those held in bondage in the four slave states that remained loyal to the ...”

“... In the 1990s, threatened by a possible challenge from Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, Bill Clinton declared that the American people would never elect a president whose surname ended with an ‘o’. In India, the BJP ideologues thought the electorate wouldn’t accept an Italian woman. Many others agreed. Several months ago, on a flight to New ...”

“... and distributed by a state organisation with a no-nonsense Attlee-era moniker, redolent of brown paper envelopes and blotched stencils and corridors smelling of disinfectant: the Central Electricity Generating Board, the CEGB. Littlechild suggested splitting the National Grid off from the power-generating side of the CEGB, privatising regional ...”

“... premiereship. In this, of course, he shares responsibility with Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. But there can be very little doubt that the existence of the SDP was the major factor in sustaining Thatcherism in defiance of the fact that the Tories were unable to achieve more than a fraction of the popular vote in either the 1983 or the 1987 ...”

“... of Crossman’s on the opposite side. In Parliament, he was overtaken by younger men – George Brown, Jim Callaghan, even Denis Healey. When Labour returned to power in 1964, he was given the important, but hardly central, office of President of the Board of Trade. Three years later, he was brutally and unceremoniously sacked. Since then, he has hung on in ...”