“... at the end when Rogozhin and Myshkin keep watch over Nastasia Filippovna’s body, whose naked foot protrudes from the sheet while a fly buzzes over the Jeyes fluid, makes one feel that Dostoevsky did not always turn parody into new reality and the Gothic into his own version of the electrically banal. John Jones may be ...”

“... which comes out too in his treatment of Blunt, Burgess, Driberg, and a civil servant called John Cairncross. All these geese become swans in Pincher’s skilled hands. How unfair to suggest that they were small fry, dilettanti, wartime temporary agents or upper-class decadents. Blunt, in particular, he praises as an agent of a supreme professionalism ...”

“... his own enfeebled left wing. Callaghan was humbled without the Falklands factor. The Tribunites Foot and Kinnock were walloped while in the process of ‘finding the centre’. The only two Labour leaders to have unseated the Conservatives in such a way as to force a rethink upon them were Attlee and Wilson. Attlee was in conventional terms well to the left ...”

“... affections than all the rest of him put together. Yet when men ran their eyes up and down his six foot two of brawn, they declared him a man, from his beaded moccasins to the crown of his wolfskin cap. But then, they were men. No doubt they were; but tender pink faces are by no means limited in the Frozen North to lady visitors, who usually come either in ...”

“... also a small beetle (Harpalus rufipes) which preys on them. This beetle lives on the ground at the foot of the plant stalk, where insecticide is more persistent, and is accordingly more devastated by its application than are the caterpillars. So when the latter re-establish themselves – as they will – they find themselves in the happy position of not ...”

“... air for 52 hours. He spent several years studying the weather on Greenland, crossing the island on foot. He died there in 1930, after getting lost in a blizzard while returning from a trip to relieve stranded colleagues. In 1910, he had mentioned in a letter to his wife how nicely the east coast of South America fitted under the bulge of West Africa, something ...”

“... is still the easiest way to get it. The Turner Diaries takes the form of a posthumous memoir by a foot soldier in the ‘Great Revolution’ of 1991-9 (i.e. well in the future when Pierce wrote the book). Earl Turner, an ordinary Joe Q. Public American, is politicised by the Washington DC ‘gun raids’ of September 1991. These have been sanctioned by the ...”

“... waved to show they were there and was shot in the hand. A little later Muhammad was shot in the foot. The father now shielded his son with his own body. More bullets hit both, and the boy was killed. Doctors removed eight bullets from the father’s body, but he has been paralysed as a consequence of the wounds and is unable to work. Because the incident ...”

“... The new select committee system was launched in 1979 with a characteristic flourish by Norman St John Stevas, then Leader of the House of Commons. MPs were ‘embarking upon a series of changes that could constitute the most important Parliamentary reforms of the century’. The proposals were ‘intended to redress the balance of power’ – as between Parliament and the executive – ‘to enable the House of Commons to do more efficiently the job it has been elected to do ...”

“... book which would summarise the recent work on mammals and help us to think realistically about it. John Eisenberg has now written that book; it is hard to imagine anyone else who could have done so. He has studied a range of mammalian species in the wild. As assistant director of the Washington zoo, he has a wide familiarity with mammals in captivity. He has ...”

“... In his off hours, London ‘wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew’, as he wrote in John Barleycorn, his ‘alcoholic reminiscences’. He was a child labourer in Oakland at 14, a Bay Area pirate at 15, a transcontinental hobo at 16, an able-bodied seaman at 17, a New York State prisoner at 18, a California ‘work beast’ at 20 and a Yukon ...”

“... else would. And we all know that, in a photo-finish, Wallace almost did; or, if we are to believe John Langdon Brooks, really did. If philosophers have been attracted to these historical sites, it is partly because the pattern of simultaneous discovery might seem to substantiate a relatively uncomplicated, inductivist account of scientific innovation. Once ...”

“... mark as a human being. In 2017, Alex Honnold, the American free-climber, scaled El Capitan, a 3000-foot rockface in Yosemite, with no harness and no ropes. What is extra alarming is that he completed this feat against the clock. Honnold says that he had to reach the most difficult part of the climb, known as the Boulder Problem, before the sun got there. The ...”

“... left-winger who had to prove his responsibility by swinging to the right.’ After Michael Foot won the leadership in 1980, Benn comments on the supposed ‘magic power’ that a new leader of the party acquires. ‘Anyone who becomes Labour leader becomes a little bit different … With a new suit and a haircut, Michael already looked a bit ...”

“... of Catholic Emancipation. There is always a place in political life for a party dedicated to foot-dragging over recent change. Centrally and locally, Toryism strengthened its bonds and waited for the succession of Whig ministries to disintegrate. In 1841, it came back to power in Peel’s great ministry. Indirectly, in charting the naivety and crudity of ...”