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“... the White House said, to lobbying by the powerful and unlikely duo of Henry Kissinger and Elton John. Nonetheless Amiel remains furious at the way she and Black have been treated and is intent on establishing his innocence on all counts. Her memoir is a bookend to his, A Matter of Principle, published in 2011, in which he praises her ‘constancy, resolve ...”

“... is like one of those local library researchers from the bosky suburbs, from Norbury or Bexley Heath, churning out tumbleweed romances. Except that his stetson is genuine, off-highway dude store, and his Tales from the Texas Woods (1997) were published in Austin and composed in Bastrop, in a Greek Revival mansion that once belonged to Joseph Sayers, a ...”

“... sa vie et ses ouvrages’, is plagiarised from two articles in the Southern Literary Messenger by John R. Thompson and John M. Daniel. Daniel’s article is plagiarised in its turn from Griswold’s obituary of Poe – a fraud within a fraud within a fraud. Traduttore: tradittore. If, as the Italians say, to translate is to ...”

“... one of the three great moments of the century. This cannot be the case in foreign affairs. Edward Heath is the only prime minister to have questioned Churchill’s belief that Britain was where three circles met, the Atlantic, Europe and the Commonwealth, and had unique authority in the West. Margaret Thatcher has been unsophisticated in these matters and ...”

“... an actor explore a part and bring greater depth and resonance to it. Trimble and his deputy, John Taylor, are redefining Unionism, and the redefinition is there in the News Letter editorial’s ‘new-sprung modern light’, as Edmund Burke would put it. Something is flying off and out of the caked nest, and it’s not crying ‘yarr yarr yarr’. The ...”

“... tourists: mid-Atlantic figures like Frank Kermode and Tony Tanner, or Francophiles like Stephen Heath and Stephen Bann. Samuel Johnson had moral principles, but nothing like a theory of literature: he didn’t need one. The force of English common sense is that it leaves you free to deal with the things that matter. Till recently, Johnsonian sentiments have ...”

“... the wishes of the Northern majority. Haughey never had scruples about endorsing this harsh claim. John Hume maintained that these articles only expressed a harmless aspiration, of which no one took much notice, but would not concede that the Council of Ireland would bring these clauses to the forefront of attention. FitzGerald was sufficiently sensitive to ...”

“... anecdotal evidence of abuse of the present system by a handful of asylum-seekers; but, as David Heath MP pointed out, the normal way of dealing with abuse of a system is to put an end to the abuse, not the system. Only the year before, a high-speed process of statutory review by the High Court had been instituted. In the course of an unusually loud and ...”

“... one thought it odd that the real inner cabinet not only did not include the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, but comprised four spinners and only two responsible ministers. As Rawnsley points out, the curious thing about Blair is that, however much he wants to reject ideology, he is also endlessly eager to explain himself, to insist that there is a big ...”

“... information on some of the ruptures in the alliance.In 1973, Henry Kissinger was infuriated by the Heath government’s public stance against US actions in the Arab-Israeli war. He responded by temporarily cutting off British access to the Five Eyes feed. But US leaders rarely found it hard to keep the British in line. The more difficult question was whether ...”

“... he warned. ‘The wave of population will break upon that shore, and roll back upon itself.’ John Maynard Keynes, who made no secret of his admiration for Malthus, attributed the First World War and the Russian Revolution to overpopulation and global competition for food. The ‘great acceleration’ of the second half of the 20th century, a period of ...”

“... of receipts and expenditures: ‘Dinner 10d. Stamp 1d. Pall Mall Gazette 1d. Train to Hampstead Heath 3d. Haircut etc 9d. Rec’d: Mother 3/6.’ As he grew busier, conscientiousness about both engagements and entries waned. Sometimes he made entries weeks after the event, admitting that he no longer remembered clearly. Then in 1897 Charlotte ...”

“... parties. It is they today who capture the headlines and – as they scurry in from Jesmond, Bushey Heath or Reading – who dominate television studios, much as Mr Derek Hatton contrived to do in his glory days in Liverpool. The analogy may, indeed, not be all that far-fetched. In recent years the Church of England has gone through much the same evolution as ...”

“... and of the ambiguities which constitute the ‘bad’ side of the priest’s discourse. Stephen Heath says of his essay that ‘as far as I am concerned, the piece is entirely past – which does not mean that I dissociate myself from it but only that I could not now write it in this same way.’ Quite understandable. In fact, his essay is both good and ...”

“... Accompanied by a growing pile of political books, I spent most of September and half of October travelling from pillar to post and from party conference to party conference – from Blackpool to Torquay to Dundee to Bournemouth and back to where we began in Blackpool. For years now I have set out on this dismal pilgrimage filled with hope and health and holiday sun, only to return filled with alcohol, tobacco fumes and hot air ...”