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“... in 1992 when I read it in Heinemann’s Best Short Stories, the annual selection edited by Giles Gordon and David Hughes. I made a mental note of the author’s name, Helen Dunmore, because I’d never heard of her before. A name to watch for, I thought, and watched for it in The Best of Best Short Stories, 1986-95. Dunmore was not included, which I thought ...”

“... In practice, such talk meant that politicians were trying to cut loose from their own parties. Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor, once dismissed a proposal from the trade unions to restore the link between pensions and average earnings; in the face of overwhelming support for the proposal at the Labour Party Conference, Brown declared that it was ‘for ...”

“... In January 1999, Colin Middleton hanged himself in prison. He’d been in custody since 1982, when he was convicted – aged 14 – of murdering his 18-month-old niece. While in prison, he had harmed himself seriously, written to the governor about his mental illness, and spoken about suicide to other inmates. On the day before his death he didn’t leave his cell, even for meals, and placed a rug over the inspection port ...”

“... If devo-max proves illusory; if Ed Miliband (loved by many Scottish voters about as much as Gordon Brown is loved in England) proves unelectable; or if there is a vote for UK withdrawal from Europe, support for Scottish independence could surge. Robert Crawford The Scottish Referendum​ of 2014 is a watershed in the history of Britain. The Union of ...”

“... day. The assassination of Lincoln was a clear scoop. There were many others, the death of General Gordon among them. One of the most romantic ‘beats’ – a word that has gone out of fashion – was the Relief of Mafeking, when a Reuters man sent his dispatch from Pretoria to Lourenço Marques hidden in a sandwich, to escape Boer censorship. Almost equally ...”

“... his accustomed style, praising the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its ‘new and very gifted conductor Colin Davis’. It was a brave and bravura performance, but it was his last appearance in public, and within two weeks he was dead. At his memorial service in Westminster Abbey, the whole of the nave was set aside for the Promenaders. In the Last Night of the ...”

“... American Military Adventure in Iraq (the most bearable of these excruciating war volumes), Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor’s Cobra II, George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate, Peter Galbraith’s The End of Iraq, and now Woodward: these books and many others present their versions of what went wrong, aim for a culprit, and hope that a firing or a ...”

“... with artists who were busy inventing their reputations. One night, I sat at the bar with Douglas Gordon while he drew me pictures of devils (I have them somewhere). Sarah Lucas and I walked the streets in search of more drink after Damien Hirst told Will Self to ‘crack a fucking smile’. I think I sang with Milli Vanilli. Life coaches will tell you that ...”

“... I felt very sorry that Henderson hadn’t lived to see Edina-Reekie-mon amour come into her own. Gordon Brown, who himself once dwelt a few hundred yards above the Meadows, was shown on the same news programme, incorporating the event into the designs of those up in Perthshire. The popular spectacle had played its part in a larger global show, he implied ...”

“... its last film – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – in November 1976.When Gary Painter and Gordon Barr, who run the Scottish Cinemas and Theatres website, were allowed into the building in 2005, two years after the leisure centre closed, it seemed as if ‘the projectionists had simply thrown dust sheets over the projectors and closed the doors.’ The ...”

“... Prosecutors obliged, making possible the falsehood, first uttered by the News of the World editor, Colin Myler, on 22 February 2007, that Clive Goodman was ‘a rogue exception’ and his crime ‘an exceptionally unhappy event’ in the paper’s history. David Cameron then satisfied himself that Myler’s predecessor, Andy Coulson (who had resigned following ...”

“... it seems le Carré toned his father down. Ronnie Cornwell was, according to Alan Clark’s brother Colin (one of his many victims), ‘the best conman ever’: I had never seen anyone who looked so trustworthy in my life. He was your favourite uncle, your family doctor, Bob Boothby and Father Christmas all rolled into one. He was stout and beaming with white ...”

“... the London-based journal of the Institute of Race Relations, and those involved with the journal, Colin Prescod, Hazel Waters and its founding editor, A. Sivanandan, helped him find an intellectual and political home in England. Robinson saw that race worked differently in a predominantly white setting. As Elizabeth put it,we had encounters where, for ...”

“... Petrie notes that Radio Free Scotland, the famous pirate radio station run throughout the 1960s by Gordon Wilson, Wolfe’s successor as party leader, hinted at ‘an equivalence between the situation in Scotland and the position prevailing in the communist states of Eastern Europe’.Petrie is not saying that the SNP simply stole unionism’s clothes. All ...”

“... Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears, told the story of Anglo-Pakistani Omar (played by Gordon Warnecke) who, tired of being patronised and bullied by his family, decides to get ahead by opening a gleaming new laundrette in South London. Having acquired the necessary start-up cash by conning a family friend in a drug deal, he employs as his partner ...”