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“... to be missed and appreciated. As the Labour Party ran slowly downhill under Wilson, Callaghan and Foot, Attlee shuffled uphill to join the immortals. Comparisons between past and present told heavily in Attlee’s favour, and the golden age of 1945 took its place in Labour mythology. Both Left and Right of the Party looked back to 1945 and claimed to inherit ...”

“... Paul Johnson does not, as they say, need much introduction. Whatever one thinks of his opinions, one has to admire his frenetic energy. From 1955 to 1970 he poured forth strong left-wing views in the New Statesman, and since then has moved to pouring forth strong right-wing views in a whole host of publications, books and speeches ...”

“... back through his pieces for the paper, and the reviews of his books, among them a glowing piece by Paul Foot in 1986, is to know that he isn’t easily pinned down. Yet if there were laws against inciting party political hatred, Johnson would have been fined and marginalised as a red-baiter on many occasions in many countries: he is a reliable, aggressive ...”

“... the future. There is more to his renewed fame than mere politics. Churchill always had one foot in the realm of popular culture. From youth onwards he was a best-selling writer in the categories of war, travel and adventure. The Second World War turned him into a movie star, prompting him to remark in 1942 that he had already sold the film rights of ...”

“... of the very early Holy Family with a Shepherd; the relationship between the left knee and the left foot of Saint Catharine in the Aldobrandini Madonna of twenty years later is no less puzzling; and thirty years after that there is the awkward collision of Christ’s arm with that of the Pharisee in the late Tribute Money painted for the king of Spain. The ...”

“... to that one is that it turns out to be a very good book. To be accurate, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross is not entirely about Rabelais, but Rabelais is one of its two heroes. He it was who built on Erasmus’s introduction of laughter into Christianity and developed it to the point where it overcame all bigotry and prejudice; the two together ...”

“... the TV drama Bad Sisters, set in Dublin, four sisters conspire to murder their brother-in-law John Paul, an abusive monster who is married to their beloved sister, Grace. The dynamics of the marriage are clear from the pilot. It’s Christmas Day and tradition has it that the siblings meet at Forty Foot – a swimming spot ...”

“... as part of a wider discourse on … fascism, Italian-style’ (my translation). As the historian Paul Corner writes, ‘it would be more useful to define the Italian regime on the basis of what it was, rather than on the basis of what it wasn’t.’ Giorgio Amendola was released from confinement in 1937 and exiled to France; he went on to Tunisia before ...”

“... of government expenditure in 1951 to 43 per cent in 1955. The second Churchill Administration, in Paul Addison’s words, was one of ‘Tory wets, for whom social harmony was a higher priority than economic sufficiency. The Prime Minister himself was soaking wet.’ Yet the very breadth of the consensus indicated the limited nature of the social ...”

“... How the Police Try to Suppress Protest (Verso, £18.99) the criminal defence solicitor Matt Foot and the documentary filmmaker Morag Livingstone argue that the pivotal moment was in January 1983, when the Conservative home secretary William Whitelaw introduced the Public Order Manual of Tactical Options and Related Matters, a classified handbook drawn ...”

“... It took two years to finish. During that time, I got pregnant and gave birth to our son, Frank Paul. After the birth, a distance started to impose itself between Lucian and me.I am and always have been dedicated to my own painting, and ambitious for it. I had managed to organise my time so that I could paint and sit for Lucian with equal commitment. But ...”

“... Why Brownlee left is Paul Muldoon’s third book of poems, and his most interesting so far. Whereas, in the earlier books, he didn’t do a great deal more than exercise the quirky, oblique lyricism which has become his personal signature, he puts it here to the service of an idea, or complex of ideas, which constitutes a private poetry of departure ...”

“... the first bizarre experience occurred. I had taken off his left shoe and scratched the sole of his foot with a key – a frivolous-seeming but essential test of a reflex – and then, excusing myself to screw my ophthalmoscope together, left him to put on the shoe himself. To my surprise, a minute later, he had not done this. ‘Can I help?’I asked. ‘Help ...”

“... Knightsbridge to be Oxford Street. Of the exhibition I recall only the two huge blackamoors at the foot of the staircase in the entrance and the music that was playing throughout (the notion of music in an exhibition then thought quite daring), though I remember, too, coveting some of the portraits and drawings of the Diaghilev troupe and finding the wild ...”