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“... Then, having dumped him, the party found it needed him back, partly because he was its one proven winner, and partly because Kevin on the outside was just as poisonous as Kevin on the in (the drip-drip of self-serving innuendo never ceased). A seemingly contrite and humbled Rudd returned to the fold. It was too late: the party was now on a hiding to nothing ...”

“... of multiple failed drugs tests. In the end, although a few athletes were caught (including the winner of the gold in the women’s shot put and an American judo competitor who blamed his positive marijuana test on eating the wrong cakes), the Games were more or less drugs-free. There were some dark rumours early on about the Chinese teenage swimming ...”

“... Announcing the winner of this year’s Samuel Johnson Prize, Andrew Marr was pleased to be able to say that none of the shortlisted books was the obvious result of a publisher’s ‘wheeze’, or the so-called biography of something which couldn’t in all honesty be said ever to have had a life. One of the more glaring recent additions to the latter category is Cocaine: An Unauthorised Biography by Dominic Streatfeild (Virgin, £20 ...”

“... of politicians in particular, that they were resolved to contrive a result in which nobody was the winner. Electoral politics resembles sport in many ways – the tribalism, the big build-up, the overwhelming focus on the result – but this election illustrated at least one way in which it is different: in politics when the final whistle blows it is possible ...”

“... right at the post by ... Then came the blank. I’d sat and watched the race, goddam it, but the winner still eluded me, just as it had at the time. By the same token, quiz me about last summer’s cricket and my response would be sketchy at best. However, I’m of the school that believes it doesn’t matter if you forget facts providing you know where you ...”

“... more chance of honourable retirement than a Syrian Ba’thist leader in the Sixties. The eventual winner of a fiendish series of coups and counter-coups between 1963 and 1970 was a very prudent, wholly unostentatious military figure. Hafiz al-Asad came from one of the less impoverished peasant families in a remote Alawite village consisting of a collection of ...”

“... can’t do any harm to his credentials for his new job at the Department of Transport. And David Miliband ingeniously contrives to include a dig at Sarah Palin, praise for Barack Obama, and a paean to the ‘best instinct of American liberalism’ in 60 words that purport to recommend a book called Counselor. In this suspicious context, one person ...”

“... of the Prix de Rome. But official money was tight, and he was advised to wait for the previous winner to return before taking up the prize. So Rome (1813-16) was preceded by Paris (1810-13), where he spent a year ‘beneath the eye’ of Jacques-Louis David. Here he received the full stamp of French neoclassicism. But ...”

“... to judge by the words on the cover: ‘the one million-copy international bestseller’ (and ‘winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt’). But is the book a success on its own terms?It opens with a series of vignettes: snapshots of various characters and their whereabouts between March and June 2021. Blake is a restaurateur who hides his true vocation from his ...”

“... the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) and West Ham, under the majority ownership of David Gold and David Sullivan, two businessmen who had made their money from pornography, agreed that the club would acquire a 99-year lease on the Olympic stadium. By then, West Ham had gone too far to retreat – not least in ...”

“... by – but to a frail old lady of 86, the widow of the former ANC leader and Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Chief Albert Luthuli. It was a master card to play, not merely because of the continuing public ambivalence towards Winnie, but because Chief Albert Luthuli still occupies a special place in the hearts of the predominantly Zulu crowd, irrespective of ...”

“... independence referendum, when he put his premiership on the line for another knife-edge, in/out, winner-take-all vote, and won. But the Brexit referendum was different and in refusing to acknowledge the differences he ended up losing everything. As far as I can see, two things went wrong. In one crucial respect, Cameron failed to follow the formula that ...”

“... now I have taken the view that my ‘Desert Island’ book, if I were asked, would have to be David Thomson’s A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema. First published in 1970, it has just re-appeared as A Biographical Dictionary of Film in a third edition that is revised and considerably enlarged. Despite its titles it is indeed a work of ...”

“... tie up lawsuits against his organisation as they go through the courts – until he emerged as the winner. Or, if the election result were delayed because the vote was too close to call, his followers should blame the Supreme Court: the very court to which he had lately added three justices to make a conservative majority. As it fell out, Trump panicked at ...”

“... Byatt (The Virgin in the Garden) found a slightly earlier epicentre in the Coronation year, 1953. David Lodge’s new novel (How far can you go?) charts Catholic perplexity in the face of the permissive Sixties, Humanae Vitae and the abolition of National Service. Julian Barnes’s very much à la mode Metroland is divided into three sections: I Metroland ...”