“... are told) that the Tories were trying to destroy his life, and who attempted an assassination of Robert Peel, the word ‘paranoia’ was never used. Instead, and tellingly, M’Naghten was found insane on grounds of homicidal mania. This must be one of the most famous cases of conspiracy theory in the psychiatric and legal literature, and it is interesting ...”

“... with all the hardships of his young life. While he was in St James’s one of the patients on his ward hanged himself in the toilets, presumably driven mad by the intolerable itching. Michael P. is as kindly as ever and me as dull, three old(-ish) men having their lunch, next stop the bowling green. 10 March. To Durham where there are not many visitors this ...”

“... of formal education. So she started writing about the law instead, in pieces about the Stephen Ward and Lady Chatterley trials for Esquire, Jack Ruby for Life, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial for the Saturday Evening Post. ‘The law, the workings of the law, the daily application of the law to people and situations, is an essential element in a country’s ...”

“... and continuity, Manzoni shaped Birmingham as few other British cities have been shaped. Like Robert Moses in New York, he was without sentimentality or apparent social concern. The starkness and cheapness of Birmingham’s appearance today is owed to his relentless driving in of aggressive roads and driving down of architectural quality. Chamberlain’s ...”

“... with a grudge, melting into the crowd. There have been plenty of incidents – George Wallace or Robert Kennedy – like that. Taiwan is in its way a highly politicised society, in which partisan passions run deeper than in older and more jaded democracies, and the immediate effect of the magical missile has been to polarise public opinion more than ever ...”

“... by Turgenev, among others, and became a cultural myth that continued up to Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward (1968). The peasants believed in a spirit world in which the souls of the dead continue to exist and influence the living, for good or evil. There is an allusion to this belief in The Brothers Karamazov when little Ilyusha asks his father to scatter bread on ...”

“... Court were now to declare his re-election by a dying and unrepresentative assembly illegal? To ward off disaster, the ISI had been preparing blackmail flicks: agents secretly filmed some of the Supreme Court judges in flagrante. But so unpopular had Musharraf become that even the sight of judicial venerables in bed might not have done the trick. It might ...”

“... this year’). He got an A in Metalwork, but the teacher couldn’t think of his name and wrote ‘Robert’ while telling him to keep up the good work. His form teacher, Mr Norman, said that ‘Ronnie’s attitude and standard of work is slipping. I hope that he takes note of what has been said to him recently. He is always pleasant and happy.’ Ronnie ...”

“... tune of about £650,000. Between Agnew’s place and Sandringham is Houghton Hall, family seat of Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, now the home of David, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, Lord Great Chamberlain and beneficiary of £260,000 in subsidies. The land Agnew’s house stands on was part, until relatively recently, of Marquess ...”

“... set tariff for treating a stroke might be calculated from the price of nine days being nursed in a ward at £170 a day, a couple of X-rays at £20 each, ten pathology tests at £6 each and six sessions of therapy for £235 – a total of £1865. If the hospital can treat the patient for £1600, it keeps the difference. The incentive to send the patient home as ...”

“... Fanny, whose dog Abbey and his wife had got rid of when they made her their miserably unhappy ward. With Alice Jennings’s consent, Abbey removed the Keats boys from Enfield, making George a clerk in his business and sending John to be apprenticed to Thomas Hammond, the surgeon-apothecary who had failed to save their mother. (Tom, the youngest of the ...”

“... Christen, adventuress installed by Powell in Islington as stenographer for Orwell, or Georgina Ward, actress in a belated stage version of his prewar novel Afternoon Men – tell no tales. His friend Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine, thought that surrounded by promiscuous friends, he may have simply found a vicarious pleasure, productive for his ...”

“... and Kerr-Bell suggest, however, that the TMO became more intermeshed with the council under Robert Black, who was chief executive at the time of the refurbishment. ‘He instilled a culture where you couldn’t complain,’ I was told. I contacted Black, trying to get him to respond to this allegation, but he preferred not to. The Grenfell Action ...”

“... trouble, he approached Matthews several times. By that time, Matthews had become friendly with Robert MacGregor, the founder and CEO of a Canada-based money-transfer firm called nTrust. Matthews encouraged MacGregor to come to Australia and assess Wright’s value as an investment opportunity. Wright had founded a number of businesses that were in trouble ...”