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“... to international development has been, to say the least, suspect. Of the most recent only Rory Stewart (2016-18) had any serious track record of interest in ‘Abroad’ and he is no longer a member of the Tory Party, having been expelled in the purge of Brexit dissidents. What to do about overseas aid has long been a problem for the Conservatives. The ...”

“... of worries, according to some. In 1959, the new pop show Juke Box Jury was produced by Johnnie Stewart. ‘I wanted to use Jim [Savile] as a bit of variety to give David Jacobs a little break,’ Stewart explains in The Story of ‘Top of the Pops’. ‘My boss at the time, the late Tom Sloan, said: “I don’t want ...”

“... often with flattering photographs. Not, however, on this occasion.28 July. In the evening we watch Stewart Lee doing his stand-up in Southend. He makes stand-up almost a moral pursuit, predicting an audience’s reaction (or lack of reaction) to his material in a way that makes the usual (and more popular) stand-ups seem crude and obvious. He’s ...”

“... Mowlam remain outside. David Trimble was astonished but that’s how it always is with New Labour. Andrew Rawnsley records how the momentous decision that Britain would not join the euro during the current Parliament was taken. Aware of the increase in Euroscepticism from Philip Gould’s focus groups and daily readings of the Sun and the Mail, Gordon ...”

“... to create is played out. His findings are damning. On 5 October 1965, as the massacres began, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, Britain’s Ambassador in Jakarta, told the Foreign Office: ‘I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.’ On the following day, the Foreign Office in ...”

“... A fascination with kitsch … massively influenced avant-garde fashion and interiors … Andrew Logan’s studio-cum-home in Hackney, London … featured a wardrobe fronted by Astroturf, a mannequin torso as a fountain … a plaster Alsatian. A heightened interest in the look of things and in what that meant was also evident in academia. Roland ...”

“... each person might be thinking their own thoughts, before one of them, Claudette Colbert or Jimmy Stewart, steps out. And if they seem wildly capable of being themselves, that capability is crowned by the ease with which they move themselves around, sovereign in their cars. This can all be observed in America’s foundations, and the writer Cotten Seiler ...”

“... Simone shut her eyes and began to play. At 4 a.m., when the set was over, she approached Harry Stewart, the owner and ‘host’, to ask how he liked her playing. Why hadn’t she sung? he asked. ‘I’m only a pianist,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow night,’ Stewart said, ‘you’re either a singer, or you’re out of a ...”

“... confirms that the neo-Victorian low-life, high-filth novel is doing well. To add to the buzz, Andrew Davies’s three-part adaptation of Waters’s first novel, Tipping the Velvet, has just been shown on TV. Waters’s tale of lesbian prostitution in the 1890s attracted publicity chiefly for the casting of Diana Rigg’s daughter, leather dildos and the ...”

“... sense that progress has been tentative. His concluding lengthy discussions of Ricky Gervais and Stewart Lee remind us that most high-profile British comedy is still the domain of straight white men, and in his closing remarks, Stubbs strikes a note of almost Roger Law-like resignation: ‘Comedy has never been an agent for radical change and there are no ...”

“... rather unsavoury disciples – most prominently among them, the racist ‘philosopher’ Houston Stewart Chamberlain – and after that by Cosima’s English daughter-in-law, Winifred. Wagner proved for many Englishmen and women the perfect expression of the night-side of European life: the first of these strange disciples, Jessie Laussot, makes her ...”

“... all from the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine; the first in the list was a surgeon, Andrew Wakefield. The paper described 11 boys and one girl (mean age six) who had been referred to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of diarrhoea, abdominal pain and a loss of acquired skills, including language. Most of the children were shown to ...”

“... stable and suitable for life.As an illustration, in 1983 Lovelock and the atmospheric scientist Andrew Watson devised Daisyworld, a computer simulation of a hypothetical world in which ecological competition between daisies of different colours affects planetary albedo, or the amount of solar radiation that is reflected back out into space – one of the ...”

“... the group’s best tunes, only to be pushed out for being a Beatles-loving middle-class namby.) Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed the Rolling Stones, was the crucial precursor in grasping that bad publicity was useful – something to be actively sought, even fabricated. But he hadn’t featured so prominently in the coverage of his clients as McLaren ...”

“... turn someone smiling, loving almost.23 March. Asked by the Guardian if I would like to interview Andrew McMillan, the poet. Though I’m an admirer I say no, only because if I did it would be as much about myself as about McMillan and how his life has been very different from mine.24 March. Rupert asks me about Worship Street, where I lodged in the early ...”