“... once a director of Sotheby’s, became MP for East Devon in 2001 and a minister of state for Northern Ireland in the coalition government in 2010, retiring from politics after the election last year. Swire was a journalist before her marriage, but gave up her career to support Hugo and to bring up their daughters, Siena and Saffron, while working as ...”

“... politicians and those in the High Court and above (about whom I am writing) cannot be removed from office. In the absence of this sanction, which to an extent keeps ministers within bounds, it is obvious that judges, though they can operate only in the cases that come before them, are politically unaccountable and ...”

“... a struggle for business on the streets of the Netherlands, part of a fratricidal postal war across northern Europe from which Royal Mail – soon, if the government gets its way, to be privatised like its Dutch and German peers – is not immune. Privatising old state post companies doesn’t necessarily make it easier for rivals to compete with ...”

“... City employees were forbidden by her to speak to the press, and during her first four months in office she provoked a string of appalled editorials in the local paper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman: Wasilla found out it has a new mayor with either little understanding or little regard for the city’s own laws. Palin ...”

“... playground gang. When Diana died less than a fortnight remained before the decisive vote for Home Rule in Scotland, the least royal-minded part of Britain; preparations were advancing rapidly to turn Australia into a republic; the British Empire had been formally wound up in Hong Kong; and in Northern Ireland a ...”

“... a randy old goat. According to Pincher, he would summon the prettier secretaries from the Express office in London (‘the black Lubianka’, as Private Eye used to call it) to spend a day or two taking dictation from him at his Surrey establishment, Cherkley Court, and there would open the interconnecting door between her ...”

“... the Charter also prescribed that Philip Marc, the unpopular sheriff of Nottingham, be removed from office. Holt wrote a fascinating little book about Robin Hood, in which he argued that, though the surviving ballads date from the 1400s, ‘Robinhood’ as a sobriquet for violent robbers and outlaws can be found in court ...”

“... and (since no society is run entirely on market lines) he was able to lobby successfully for the office of Distributor of Stamps. A Culture for Democracy would, I think, have been a better book if it had placed the 20th-century relations between commercial and élite culture in some sort of historical perspective. The ...”

“... and tender, indulging them as he himself had been indulged at Fox How, the Arnold family home in the Lakes. From the start, he was exasperating. Even the awful presence of the great Doctor could not make him grind away at his studies, whether at private school, at Winchester, where he spent a year, at Rugby, where he did win some lesser prizes, or at ...”

“... the United States military-industry complex: during our demonstration at Dow Chemical’s London office, I heard the workers coming out, sobbing that it wasn’t fair, they couldn’t help it, they were only doing their job. This could also be seen as ‘Fascist’, rather like Dr Waldheim’s war service. We were in the ...”

“... massive running costs, predicted deficit and extravagant insurance. In return, the New York office has only to design, curate and present the exhibitions any way it likes. How could a fly in the ointment like ETA spoil such an idyll? Dissenting voices in the three Spanish Basque provinces have pointed out the many ...”

“... worker, the hands and wrists methodically broken. The junta’s last act before handing over office in 1989 was to grant itself an amnesty for its crimes. But the Supreme Court has now decided, first, that abductions which were unsolved at the date of the amnesty law are continuing and therefore still triable ...”

“... war has been fought to please neo-conservative friends in an administration despised abroad and at home, this crowing may prove not to have been the wisest of moves. David Kelly’s decision to take his own life on 17 July 2003 produced a wave of public revulsion against the government, and against the prime minister in particular. It could have seemed a ...”

“... Scottish Parliament since the Union of 1707. And almost 42 per cent of the electorate stayed at home. It did rain, I suppose. Since the devolution referendum of 1997, media attention has largely focused on the threat posed by the SNP to the integrity of the United Kingdom. This in turn has provoked an English nationalist backlash among Tory ...”

“... that the constitutional ‘right to keep and bear arms’, affirmed for self-defence within the home in 2008, can now be applied outside it. According to research published in Scientific American, ‘guns kill more children than motor vehicle collisions, cancer, infections, or any other disease.’ But, the article goes on, ‘unlike cars and virtually ...”