“... member of the Commission on Presidential Debates, can claim particular authority. (‘President John F. Kennedy told me more than once’ is the book’s opening phrase.) His and LaMay’s study is overwhelmingly concerned with the complex and often tortured history of the debates as an institution. There is some information – but not a lot – about the ...”

“... he’d done more than anyone to establish was headquartered on the other side of the Atlantic. John Wyndham and Arthur C. Clarke, the most important British science fiction writers to emerge after the war, published in the pages of American magazines. Attempts to revive the domestic scene failed to gather momentum until 1954, when New Worlds – a former ...”

“... looked like an obvious loser in the Gulf War accounting. Now he is being courted again by James Baker, as perhaps the only person who can square the self-imposed American circle whereby the Palestinians pick a non-PLO delegation. And a White Paper has been issued in which the Jordanian position on the war (no foreign troops, a regional solution, the concept ...”

“... effort to flip the state of Georgia. Led by Abrams, an heir of the great civil rights leaders Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, political organisers worked slowly and patiently to get out the vote, especially among Black people. Some Democratic insiders were sceptical but Abrams insisted that Georgia was changing. Thanks to the reverse migration of Black people ...”

“... This pressure has apparently continued since Mrs T’s departure, including lunches with Kenneth Baker, dinner parties at Tristan Garel-Jones’s with the likes of Douglas Hurd, and a proper nosh-up with the brown sauce man in person – Mr Major. But everything has so far foundered on the inability of the Tories to promise Owen and his two remaining SDP ...”

“... arranged,’ Virginia Woolf wrote, disparaging the kind of fiction associated with Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells. It’s a proposition that might appeal to Simon Okotie. But before deciding whether it has merit he would want to see whether an apparently symmetrical arrangement of gig-lamps might not, on close examination, prove ever so ...”

“... Her initiatives included opportunities for training, for instance, as a barber, mechanic, baker or garment worker; a paid work scheme, in which wages were given directly to imprisoned people; and job placements for adolescents after they were released. She tried to fill gaps in resources by recruiting volunteers and non-profit organisations, and ...”

“... of that menu, dish by dish, culminating with an enormous chocolate cake from Mme Thiéry, the baker’s wife. But after that, nothing went right. Dozy with cake, he cycled to visit a contact, only to be confronted at the door by a German Feldgendarme with a gun. After a hand-to-hand struggle, during which he was shot several times, Rée managed to escape ...”

“... star, but which applied to literature too, the success of J.B. Priestley and, at a later date, John Braine evinced by their brisk departure from their Bradford birthplace. In this respect the Brontë Sisters (Mam had seen the films, though she’d not read the books) were thought to be tragic figures, not on account of their bleak upbringing or their short ...”

“... of Table Mountain, symbolised his conversion to the values of the Dutch. He hired Herbert Baker to plan an austere refurbishment; the house was filled with the teak furniture of the early Dutch. One Boer visitor watched an irate Rhodes kick an African stable lad’s behind and concluded that he was now one of them. But there was an ill omen about the ...”

“... It took him through the war, and it played a part in my coming to be. My mother, Constance Mary Baker, was born on 9 March 1891 in 44 Gordon Square, the illegitimate daughter of William Henry Baker, who had a highly profitable career as a speculative builder of the vast rambling pubs that made late Victorian London a city ...”

“... began to follow the first GCSE courses under the National Curriculum, the Education Minister John Patten infuriated the teaching profession by announcing an immediate review of the Statutory Order for English. No sooner had the review been announced than Mr Patten and his fellow ministers did their best to pre-empt its outcome. They let it be known that ...”

“... Matt Munro, Perry Como or Tony Bennett have been written about as tragic lives (though Chet Baker, with the sweet girlie voice that none of the divas had, probably belongs on the women’s side). Even the neurotic Sinatra is mostly known for having fun. Singing for men can be technique and a good voice, for women it has to come from bleeding ...”

“... box (or Rubik’s Cube). The three barbicans that command the points of the V are House of Fraser, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer. There is an upper and a lower mall. The temperature is unnatural; so temperate that it drives you mad. You can’t sweat. You’re blow-dried. You can’t breathe. Air is recycled as in an airliner. You’re supposed to make those ...”

“... two metres square, without touching each other, and read their papers without falling over. At Baker Street, the Metropolitan departs from its original Paddington route. We hit the surface and after Finchley Road I was able to sit by the window. The heating warmed my ankles. Everyone in the carriage was getting drowsy. It was strangely luxurious. You tend ...”