“... of the landscape and positioned the Conservatives to exploit it in the coming fight with Gordon Brown, New Labour’s heir in waiting. ‘Imagine a Tory leader promising that when his government came in there would be no special favours for those who contribute to Conservative Party funds; for employers, businessmen and the City; for big landowners, rich ...”

“... of the Trump Links golf course, the name spelled out in giant letters of grey bricks set into the brown grass. It was a Tuesday morning, and we were on the way to see Donald Trump address an arena full of New Hampshire residents at Great Bay Community College on the outskirts of Portsmouth. On the radio the former Colorado senator and disgraced 1984 ...”

“... over the years: fear of Scargill, fear of Galtieri, fear of inflation, fear of black and brown people. And in 1987, whatever the raggedness in the presentation of her own policies, she played it again to perfection. In a book clearly designed to serve the interests of the Lord Young-Tim Bell faction in the intrigues around the Peacock Throne, the ...”

“... in the next four years and to deploy 6000 National Guard along the length of the frontier. The bill is sponsored by John McCain (Arizona), who, like George W. Bush, was once an immigration liberal but sees where the votes have come to lie in recent years. Two highly visible protagonists in the immigration drama, Salvador Reza and the Republican state ...”

“... the OPC’s better-known operations, such as the channelling – through an official called Irving Brown at the American Federation of Labor – of millions of dollars to the Corsican leader of the Marseille dockers, Pierre Ferri-Pisani, whose members would beat up Communists trying to disrupt the landing of aid, or the activities of the Congress for Cultural ...”

“... in December 2006 – ‘whether we want to replace them’? The reason seems to be that Gordon Brown was eager to create jobs for BAE shipbuilders in the North-West, while Blair wanted to ensure that the UK would continue in its role as spear-carrier to the US. The US first agreed to provide the UK with submarine-launched ballistic missiles – the Polaris ...”

“... of tea for breakfast: He stirred the milk in the mug, till, turning from clear but dark to pale brown and neutrally uniform, the water had become tea-like, the spoon negotiating the vortex it had set in motion by constantly evading, and sometimes colliding into, the submerged leviathan tea bag. Then he’d retrieved it from the pool on to his spoon, at once ...”

“... Senate, not known for its bipartisanship, passed the Covid Hate Crimes Act by 94 votes to 1. The bill, sponsored by the Japanese-American senator Mazie Hirono, is intended to provide funding for police departments to identify hate crimes against Asian Americans. A few days later, a Chinese-American cop in New York sued a Black protester who had taunted him ...”

“... minds’. Banville has rejected Joyce and Beckett as influences. O’Nolan surprisingly fills the bill. O’Nolan and Banville, although they are both disdainful of it, compel themselves to imagine the ordinary. Brian O’Nolan stayed put in Dublin not least because of this moral conservatism. The best of O’Nolan’s work transforms that personal attachment ...”

“... the Vegan refused. Later she said: ‘Carmen, I hope your sister wasn’t offended but I only eat brown bread.’ Just before lunch the person who had the sex change was at the nurse’s desk in a flimsy blue nightdress, asking if she could wash her hair. But there’s still no hot water. The nurse was calling her Caroline. She looked very excited about her ...”

“... one fear barrier: ‘the overhung corner and rib on Castle Rock where Triermain Eliminate, a Brown and Whillans route, goes straight up, and Harlot Face, a Birkett route, veers out onto the rib, then round and up it out of sight.’ For six years, Craig could not make himself pass this point when leading a climb: he knew exactly where it was, ‘six ...”

“... judging from the frequency with which corrections of one kind and another have been made to B.C. Brown, The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne (1935, reprinted 1968). Just how successfully it has been carried out it is impossible to say. It was no part of the author’s brief to provide a new edition of Anne’s correspondence, and it would ...”

“... on such a distasteful subject. The shivering girl was told that if she persisted in her folly, a Bill of Renunciation would be placed before Parliament, and would require her exile from the realm as well as the loss of all titles and income. Finally, at a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, she crumbled and said she’d give up the man in her ...”

“... the Covid era: ‘tainted, murderous vaccines’; the World Health Organisation in league with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a ‘transnational group of bad actors’; ‘Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide’. And it’s been no better since Wolf was allowed back on ‘X’, as we must now call it after Elon Musk took over Twitter. ‘Ed ...”

“... baby in a Catholic place for unwed mothers and left it with an adoption agency. She later married Bill, a telephone installer from San Bernardino with a mammoth, Nietzsche-style moustache, and became a compulsive gambler and grocery-coupon clipper before dying of drink at 46 in 1996.Unlike Art, however, I never mastered a musical instrument. (Plinking guitar ...”