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“... worse. Behind his high doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament, unencumbered by rival power or binding precedent, ‘lurks the menacing, insatiable sovereign will of the people – the id to Westminster’s ego’. The tenets of Diceyan constitutionalism, despite appearances, amount in the end to little more than a formula for ‘mob-rule’, as his own ...”

“... actually dumped, however, until 21 September 1794, the day the body of the martyred radical Jean-Paul Marat entered. In 1797 the relatively conservative regime wanted to bring Mirabeau back, but his body was nowhere to be found. (This was not the only lost body: the hero of Verdun in 1792, General Nicolas-Joseph Beaurepaire, was supposedly sent to the ...”

“... let the government get away with 4 per cent inflation. Slight problem: the 2 per cent figure is a binding target, to which both parties are committed. Hmm. What all this adds up to is a set of constraints so clear they are almost a diagram. The government has to cut the deficit. That involves raising taxes and cutting spending. The government can’t do it ...”

“... Jarman made a note in his diary in April 1989: ‘Since autumn: Terry, Robert, David, Ken, Paul, Howard. All the brightest and best trampled to death – surely even the Great War brought no more loss into one life in just 12 months, and all this as we made love not war.’ In March 1992: ‘We talked of the people who died of Aids this week.’ ‘To ...”

“... no appeal, the one ‘likeness’ guaranteed to show you looking the way you never want to look. Paul Fussell called it ‘the most egregious little modernism’, redolent of ‘the world of Prufrock and Joseph K and Malone’, and indeed every time my photo is scrutinised by a passport officer, it’s as if I’ve entered that same world of anxiety and ...”

“... but she soon had to realise that ‘even Obama’s government’ would never accept legally binding fossil fuel emissions targets. Then came Trump. Even before he entered the White House, Trump fired repeated rhetorical broadsides at Merkel, accusing her of ‘destroying’ her country by admitting too many refugees, complaining that she spent too ...”

“... ruins, the exploration of geographical and social wastelands. Some, following in the footsteps of Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea, see the Northern towns as horrors. Others, indignant at the haemorrhage of jobs and skills, chart the progress of disindustrialisation. Ian Jack’s Before the Oil Ran Out and Robert Chesshyre’s The Return of a Native ...”

“... monumental collection is ‘based on the award-winning design of the Oxford Shakespeare’, the binding and dust jacket defiantly proclaim its difference from that distinguished model. The Shakespeare was bound in the press’s traditional Oxford blue, its spine adorned with the familiar gilt coat of arms; the Middleton is clad in unornamented ...”

“... on a single, dreadful act that gives them the excuse they need to gun the engines of oppression. Paul Foot London All I have to offer, in this distracted time, are stray thoughts and overheard lines. First, from my 14-year-old son, after several days of bluster about ‘righteous’ war: ‘“Evil” is what you talk about when you can’t explain what ...”

“... his first page ‘PRIVATE’. Forty-seven years later it was showing ‘signs of wear in the binding and of recalcitrancy in the lock’, and as time ran on, he started to wonder if the lock was really necessary. ‘The older one grows, the less one values secrecy perhaps, anyhow there is little of me I feel worthwhile to lock up.’ Even so the book ...”

“... a group of young intellectuals from different disciplines – it included Cardoso from sociology, Paul Singer from economics, José Artur Giannotti from philosophy, Roberto Schwarz from literature – started a seminar on Capital that became a legend, lasting five years and affecting the atmosphere of the Faculty for ten. When the Armed Forces seized power in ...”

“... it had only been one of the lesser beneficiaries.’ The possibility of a provocative revision of Paul Addison’s Road to 1945 can be glimpsed here. The assumption remains, however, that it was the degree of social consensus which governed the pace of economic growth and the fate of European policy. But ‘consensus’ is an evasive term, notoriously close ...”

“... agreement’ marking a new commitment to ‘tackling climate change’ and resulting in a ‘non-binding’ declaration which reflected ‘a real change of mood’. Just what the world needs – more hot air. And then the news moves on to other things, to contaminated Anglo-Hungarian turkeys and gang shootings and potential schisms in the Anglican ...”

“... counterpart; John Milton, represented by Paradise Lost; William Sherlock, the theologian; and Paul de Rapin, author of the bestselling History of England, published in the 1720s.Peering at the scans, I was able to make out several more lines: originally, as many as twenty of the spines may have been inscribed. And then, one discovery abruptly transformed ...”

“... to the government’s 2050 target. For another, nothing it has to say, when it does, will be binding on the government. And citizens’ assemblies are notoriously slow to deliver their findings. The fourth session, scheduled for mid March, was cancelled because of the virus.Non-violent​ disruption is more controversial than the three demands, though ...”