“... beginning with the first non-stop transatlantic flight, made in 1919 by John Alcock and Arthur Brown. McCann reconstructs the perils of the journey, the freak weather and mechanical trouble, as well as the ‘genius and magic’ needed to see them through. The chapter is high on technical detail and period slang (plenty of Great Scotts and Tally-hos) but ...”

“... that could improve their chances of survival. Milman describes the case of the tiny, greenish-brown butterfly known as Saint Francis’s Satyr, which was believed to be extinct until a few thousand were discovered in the artillery range at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. ‘To the shuddering background noise of 181 kilogram bombs, the butterfly happily flits ...”

“... not an in/out vote but a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty. The fact that Blair and then Brown never delivered on this promise as the Constitutional Treaty turned into the Lisbon Treaty did not invalidate it. Yes, there was mounting pressure to hold a referendum and yes, previous pledges to hold one had not been honoured. But none of that made it ...”

“... in the first place. Like all good myths this was based on a half-truth: before the recession Gordon Brown had been a little less prudent than he should have been: he had been too optimistic about tax receipts, and followed a fiscal rule that allowed his progress in reducing debt in the early years of the Labour government to be reversed in later ...”

“... than fantasy tabloid) decisions concerning human rights that have emerged from the courts. Under Gordon Brown, Labour has even shown a tentative interest in extending protection into the realm of social and economic rights: its discussion paper on a bill of rights and responsibilities was widely mocked when it appeared early last year and the idea has ...”

“... of the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights and responsibilities entrenched against repeal. Gordon Brown advocates a new constitutional document ‘in parallel’, as the recent green paper puts it, with a bill of rights and duties. The Liberal Democrats advocate a convention-plus model. It’s worth considering first what the relationship of ...”

“... parties as the nadir of postwar Britain. David Cameron (though it could just as easily have been Gordon Brown) read out the charge sheet at a Demos meeting in 2006: ‘economic decline . . . inflation, stagnation and rising unemployment . . . deteriorating industrial relations’. Nearly 30 million working days were lost to strikes in 1979, mainly ...”

“... Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) is little more than a propaganda outfit. The NHS? Crippled by Blair and Brown with their PFIs and privatisations and now well on its own way to privatisation thanks to the last Health Bill. The railway companies? Loathed by the bulk of their ‘customers’ they still receive state subsidies although the idea of renationalising them ...”

“... of the financial sector had left Britain overexposed – in his Keynesian response to the crisis, Gordon Brown had pulled the economy back from the brink of disaster, even into modest growth by the time of the 2010 election. Labour had still gone into that campaign arguing that spending reductions would be necessary (largely at the insistence of ...”

“... immediate contradiction and yet authoritative enough to set the tone for the other papers. ‘Mr Brown,’ a Telegraph story on 4 June began, ‘is considering removing Mr Darling from the Treasury and replacing him with Ed Balls, the schools secretary and his closest political adviser.’ You can’t argue with ‘considering’ – he might also be ...”

“... reshaping 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 ...”

“... as proof of the Union’s benefit to Scotland – its chief architects, Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, both of them Scottish, were also the most prominent leaders of the campaign against independence six years later. The role of Paterson’s Bank of England – and the currency it controls – is today the greatest single weakness in the case ...”

“... but receiving £2 billion up front helped Labour operate within the fiscal strictures set down by Gordon Brown in his ‘golden rules’: spending must be balanced by taxes over the economic cycle and the government should borrow only to invest. This immediate benefit of the loan sale was seen to outweigh future losses. Recently the coalition government ...”

“... and the UK expelled a few of each other’s diplomats. Their secret services stopped co-operating. Gordon Brown refused all meetings with Putin. In London, Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, was told by the Foreign Office to sit tight and wait while the UK tried to find a way to extradite the killers through back-channel negotiations. In 2010 she was still ...”

“... essential to know how, on his deathbed, Henry James’s head lolled unshaven to one side above a brown Jaeger blanket, or that Virginia Woolf’s corpse floated for three weeks in the, Ouse before it was carted off to be identified? In choosing to write ‘informal’ biography, David Arkell is relieved of the burden of having to record every fact in ...”