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“... mainstream, main chance. Politically these are authorised versions. One of the entries, by Roger Woddis, sings of ‘The Church of Kenneth Baker’. If his church recalls the characterisation of the C of E as the Tory Party on its knees, it is Our Lady of Chequers upon whom the genuflecting is bent. Her Government’s victory with the Poll Tax ...”

“... bulletins – priceless moments of political prime time which show Kinnock up or Thatcher down or Owen playing prime minister for a day. And built around those images come ideas and patterns to be repeated through the political year, whether true or false – a seasonal yield of misty perceptions which are all we know of political reality. The philosopher ...”

“... plus the colourful Abe Segal, and fine Davis-Cuppers like Bob Hewitt, Ian Vermaak, Trevor Fancutt, Owen Williams – as well as the best of them, Cliff Drysdale. The connection between tennis and politics is hinted at in the extracts about and by Arthur Ashe, but there is also something to be said about the German game, whose earliest prominent figure, the ...”

“... is enough to invoke, by conditioned reflex, the Agatha Christie cornerstone, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Or as Derek Raymond (Robin Cook) frequently proclaimed, paraphrasing Edmund Wilson: ‘who gives a fuck who killed Roger Ackroyd?’ Raymond, attempting in The Hidden Files to define the ‘black novel’ in ...”

“... of James Shirley; the Wales of Morgan Llwyd, Henry Vaughan and Katherine Philips; the Munster of Roger Boyle; the Edinburgh of Sir George Mackenzie and William Cleland; the Derry of William Philips. Its historical scope is just as broad. After a final chapter on Daniel Defoe’s activities in Edinburgh in 1706-7, where he intrigued, lobbied and proselytised ...”

“... Sydney Newman, the playwright Troy Kennedy Martin, the producer Kenith Trodd, the script editor Roger Smith and others, had thoughts about creating a new form of drama, not dependent on theatrical traditions, but written and directed for the strengths of the television studio. While Potter’s early Nigel Barton plays criticised the poverty of political ...”

“... for the Fourth and Fifth Man. It is this story which is at the root of the accusations against Sir Roger Hollis, for when Blunt was turned up – not through Golitsyn’s efforts – it was already gospel among MI5 mole-hunters that there must be a Fifth Man somewhere. More alarming still was Golitsyn’s allegation that the KGB had so penetrated the Labour ...”

“... of his works. (A long-awaited life is in preparation by the leading Anglophone Cravaniste, Roger Lloyd Conover.) This lacuna is curious because although Cravan was Swiss by birth, and wrote exclusively in French, he was a mix of Irish and English by blood. I have long been fascinated by this hyperbolic but ultimately enigmatic figure, and not the least ...”

“... Britishness has ‘virtually disappeared’, there should be more to English identity than the Owen, Beckham and Rio Ferdinand show. Tom Nairn remains, as ever, exasperated: surely Britain ought to have broken up by now? Although much of the prose in Pariah shows Nairn at his allusive, splenetic best, even he seems weary of denouncing our archaic ...”