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“... was living on £46,000 a year, Mandelson borrowed £373,000 (eight times his MP’s salary) from Geoffrey Robinson, an industrialist Blair put in the Treasury after New Labour’s victory. Robinson’s fortune had been inflated by dealings with Robert Maxwell, the Channel Island tax havens and a legacy from a satirically named Madame Bourgeois, a Belgian ...”

“... a 1779-page book which is as regal as a palace, as intricate as a maze, and as inviting as a tall wall bottle-spiked. Oh, I managed, as any reader of LRB would manage. But there is an element of pretence in imagining that such language studies, or Greenbaum’s collection of essays, must be anti-élitist and egalitarian.The old authorities were scrutable to ...”

“... capitalism (having made more cautious moves in this direction under the long editorship of Geoffrey Crowther between 1938 and 1956). In 1965, an article proclaimed the US ‘the most internationally responsible country in the world’, at a time when, as Alexander Zevin points out in Liberalism at Large, it was demonstrating this responsibility by ...”

“... round to face the bedhead, the top of which he grasped so that it banged rhythmically against the wall; at the same time he began to shout and the girl, too, calling out with harsh expectant ascendant cries. The Donaldsons’ love-making had been largely mute (and certainly posing no danger to property), a grunt from Cyril signifying that he at any rate had ...”

“... not answer my calls. Finally he was found, seated gloomily by himself in the closet facing the wall. He was punishing himself. We later found a smallish puddle of vomit in the conservatory. No one had ever before punished him for his attacks of gastritis, naturally; it was all his own idea, his peculiar Bostonian sense of guilt. And what was Elizabeth ...”

“... and his successor, Charles Moore, though one with a strong ideological slant which may – as Geoffrey Wheatcroft recently argued – have damaged the Tories by losing the historic thread of fuzzy, inclusive One Nation Conservatism. It certainly did a brilliant job of backing the wrong candidate in the Tory Party’s many leadership contests, in every ...”

“... homes, religious and patriotic decorations sat side by side: ‘a picture of the Saviour on one wall and one of J.L. Sullivan, the bare-knuckle fighter, opposite’. Oral tradition, too, entangled national identity and religion. (Samuel wasn’t interested only in oral history as a technique of the professional historian but in oral traditions as live ...”

“... Carpathians to the Black Sea, once oil is pumped into it and ignited, this dyke will become ‘a wall of liquid fire’. Soon, the Carol Line will form an unbroken chain of fortifications, ‘a living wall against aggression’.‘“rivers of fire” to guard rOmania: canals to be filled with oil, concrete and barbed ...”

“... more munificently than King ever did. 16 February: Man on the phone opposite takes a piss by the wall, talking throughout. I wonder whether he tells the person he is talking to that he’s currently having a piss and, if it’s a woman, if this is some sort of come-on. 28 February. Spike Milligan dies and the nation’s laughter-makers queue up to testify to ...”

“... provide further pearls and stumbling-blocks. They include accounts of the language of advertising, Wall Street jargon, philanthropy, an extract from David Lodge’s Nice Work, articles on legal language and on Ronald Reagan’s speech-writer, a rant on modern television from Frederic Raphael, and views on editing (John Gross), Post-Structuralism (Alison ...”

“... licence to distinguish him from those who are National Socialists out of conviction. The historian Geoffrey Barraclough pointed out, long ago, that Hitler’s was Germany’s first genuine bourgeois revolution. So, perhaps it’s a matter of class?The reason, Martin-Heinz Douglas Freiherr von Bora, is that you are all that we’re striving to leave behind, the ...”

“... realise I have her inextricably confused with the Duchess of Windsor who I know is dead. Both, in Geoffrey Madan’s words, ‘part governess, part earwig’. 11 August. In the yard at the back of Camden Social Services in Bayham Street a mound of tangled Zimmer frames. 14 August. Toothache, and I make an appointment for the dentist. The trouble is almost ...”

“... I wanted. Then, as an experiment I tried some yellow stain on a small patch and this turned the wall a vibrant green, too strong I’m sure for many people but for me ideal, so that’s how I did the whole room. The study next door I did differently using water-based stains and as the walls here were lime plaster too I painted them in a mixture of umber and ...”

“... end of 1989 Lawson was gone, and within a year Thatcher had followed him, toppled by her deputy, Geoffrey Howe, on account of her growing hostility to the Community. She was still strong enough to ensure that her favoured successor, John Major, took over, but it soon became clear that he had no more intention than Lawson or Howe of hewing to her vision of ...”

“... weakened by defeat in the first Commons vote on Maastricht – and Thatcher, taken down by Geoffrey Howe in 1990 for undermining Britain’s negotiators in Brussels. By then her Euroscepticism had surged. But for ten years she had been keen to stay inside the tent, pissing in, if necessary. This is hard to remember now that a crew of no-nation Tories ...”