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“... But the BBC, influential and plural, is perhaps the most representative. A corporation financed by the only tax the government raises but can’t spend, a large-scale employer with a public service remit, a reporter and creator of fashion and culture, a purveyor of news, information, education and entertainment operating at the cutting edge of technological ...”

“... year’s election and he needed one of his most contentious and least popular ministers to be less visible. Still, he discussed it with Gove beforehand – selling it as an opportunity to put ‘all that passion and antagonism’ to better use – and he thought he had his friend’s agreement. Then, out of the blue, ‘Michael emailed to say he had ...”

“... flavour of the wars as combatants and non-combatants experienced them. He follows current fashion by treating the fighting in England, Ireland and Scotland as part of a single struggle, and shows that in all three kingdoms the wars were fought with a mixture of amateurishness and brutality that makes it absurd to romanticise them. Some officers on both sides ...”

“... Novels dealing with childhood memory are frequently said to be ‘Proustian’. Those describing the decline of an aristocracy are likely to be labelled ‘Lampedusian’. The people responsible for these ugly, usually unsuitable adjectives are sometimes reviewers but more often the culprits are publishers ...”

“... expresses itself in social reproduction.” Thank you very much. Young made his early reputation by his work in urban anthropology (Family and Kinship in East London) and then, even more, by a piece of sociological analysis in the guise of Science Fiction. The Rise of the Meritocracy was a sensation of the Fifties, not ...”

“... The Dam Busters, shown on BBC Television one Sunday afternoon recently, must be the perfect war film for people like myself who don’t really approve of war, or of the military mystique of competitive valour and unquestioning obedience to authority, or of the exploitation of these things for purposes of entertainment, but nevertheless go weak at the knees at the image of a flak-scarred Lancaster bomber coming in to land on a dandelion-strewn airfield at dawn somewhere in East Anglia in 1943 ...”

“... enterprise proved unsuccessful it provided him with a fund of experiences which he later enriched by further adventures in Texas, Mexico and North Africa. His travel sketches and accounts of experiences and characters met with in these adventures constitute an important part of his literary output. He returned to Scotland on his father’s death in 1883 and ...”

“... triumph for Roy Jenkins. The crowds which packed the silent, thoughtful meetings were drawn by him. The old ladies who switched tremulously and belatedly from the Tories switched to him. The clever-silly London journalists who explained why the SDP bubble was going to burst made their jokes at his expense. Defeat would have kept him out of the ...”

“... recent years should have been a breeding ground for parties of the ultra-Right. A country humbled by the loss of its imperial role, by its industrial decline compared to other major – and minor – powers, and by the failure of the nostrums prescribed ...”

“... never had much logic, inasmuch as entrepreneurial (or, for that matter, professional) skills are by no means a matter of upbringing or heredity. What the tradition in effect provided was a convenient myth to justify and to sustain paternal striving: for many a concern, the building-up or maintaining of something to pass on to one’s sons – or, in default ...”

“... This, as he is well aware, is what Whitman was prescribing when he urged the poet not to be meddlesome, but to allow experience to go from the composition without a shred of the composition. Whitman’s word for this is ‘candour’. For Gregory Corso, Karl Shapiro and Gary Snyder, poets of the San Francisco renaissance, the need was for a poetry ...”

“... most compelling contest so far has been the one between the vice-presidential candidates. Watched by nearly 20 million more people than the first McCain/Obama debate, viewers switched on in the hope or fear of witnessing one or other of the candidates go down in flames. For a while, the most intriguing aspect of the first debate was whether it would happen at ...”

“... This election year​ will be remembered as the one in which two candidates rallied the indignation of millions against the establishment. Both Trump and Sanders actually call it that. The reflexive response of the establishment – proof of its existence, if you needed proof – has been its uniform portrayal of the two ...”

“... To paraphrase​ Roland Barthes, hats are worn to be seen and to be read. They are signs of who we are or want to be. Because hats, unlike shoes or coats, are worn near eye-level, they are the first item of apparel offered for view. The stranger approaching from a distance reads the hat before he sees the face or figure and, at a glance, learns a lot about the person beneath it ...”

“... 07’ was the pithy slogan). But once in power, the party discovered it couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him. His disdain for his colleagues, his paranoia, his monomania and his disloyalty proved too much: there was a coup and he was ousted. Then, having dumped him, the party found it needed him back, partly because he was its one proven ...”