“... world of vacant celebrity and tawdry sensationalism that I have never quite believed anyone took seriously. But it becomes clear that Morgan took it very seriously indeed and so do the people whose lives were his raison d’être as an editor and maybe more than just as an editor. His narrative is entirely about being ...”

“... the party’s co-operation agreement with the Scottish Greens. Yousaf and his replacement, John Swinney, sullied their reputations by defending the former health secretary Michael Matheson, who misled Holyrood’s presiding officer over £11,000 of roaming charges racked up on his iPad. The SNP’s centralising tendencies, lack of transparency and ...”

“... an 81-year-old woman in Clacton, Essex, dialled 999, complaining of chest pains. The ambulance took three hours and 45 minutes to arrive. It was too late. A few days later, a 52-year-old man in Norfolk collapsed with severe chest pain and vomiting. He was taken to the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital, but had to wait in the back of the ambulance that ...”

“... and was recklessly ambitious. I had hesitated before knocking on her door that first time. But I took to Sharon, whose prickly exterior is a defence mechanism and whose refusal to be cowed into silence I came to admire. I got to know her better the following year when I covered the trial of George Heron, which was moved away from the North-East to Leeds and ...”

“... other prospective candidates by being well prepared, forthright and energetic. That was all it took. She was not an electrifying public speaker, but she was highly competent and committed. She answered questions and she was never afraid of answering back. She was admired for what was called her ‘platform knowledge’. Bill Deedes, who also first stood ...”

“... door. After a year she gave notice – she wished to move on – but before giving up her job she took leave to nurse victims of the Broad Street Pump cholera outbreak in Soho. Between 31 August and 9 September, five hundred residents of the streets around Golden Square died. Once the outbreak was over she returned to her parents’ home in Derbyshire. Mrs ...”

“... Kentridge’s subject: the art-commissioning body for the World War One centenary gave the job to John Akomfrah, whose three-screen installation, Mimesis: African Soldier, is on show at the Imperial War Museum in London.Akomfrah, born in Ghana in 1957 and famous for his video/sound explorations of migration (mostly forced migrations, including slavery), the ...”

“... they voted in local elections, and in November the referendum on the future of New Caledonia took place. Many of them are now thinking about how they will vote in next year’s municipal and European elections, and some wiseacres point out that the Constitution would allow the President, if he so wished, to dissolve the present Assembly in May 1989 and ...”

“... that it had not entirely done so. For 11 years, Britain was led by a prime minister who took Britain further into Europe, by pressing for passage of the Single European Act, but simultaneously conducted a relentless propaganda campaign against ‘Europe’ and all its works. This was perhaps the main reason why the apparently settled verdict of 1975 ...”

“... philosopher Damascius, written in the sixth century; and a late seventh-century Chronicle by John, bishop of Nikiu, which survives in an Ethiopic translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek text based in part on Coptic oral tradition. Damascius, the only pagan source, offers the most detailed portrait of Hypatia. His Life of Isidore, a biography of ...”

“... his life a copious correspondent, but he appears to have been in his midforties before people took to preserving what he had addressed to them. Even so, Humphrey Carpenter has found that ‘an immense number’ of letters survive. In projecting the present selection, he realised that ‘an enormous quantity of material would have to be omitted’ and that ...”

“... reform and improved urban welfare. The great change in the health of the urban population took place between 1880 and 1920. After that, improvement was slower but could still be directly brought about by legislation. The last vicious London smog took place, Bill Luckin’s chapter on pollution reminds us, after the ...”

“... France, to Switzerland, Italy, Germany and back again. Lee was eager to emphasise that her parents took no interest in monuments, panoramic views, churches or local colour. ‘We never saw any sights,’ she wrote in The Sentimental Traveller (1908): instead, she read voraciously, was casually instructed by a string of governesses and acquired an enduring love ...”

“... son to Stellenbosch University. There, he might have encountered nationalist ideas. As it was, he took a job with an anti-Afrikaner newspaper in the very British city of Durban and decided to become an English writer. Christened Lourens, he began to call himself Laurens, a name that he liked to pretend recalled Huguenot descent, but in some of the stories his ...”

“... In 1644, the Puritan cleric John Shaw journeyed up to Westmorland to instruct the local people, who, he had been told, were sadly lacking in knowledge of the Bible. The need was confirmed when he interrogated an old man whose long life in the wake of the Reformation seemed to have left him entirely ignorant of all matters theological and ecclesiastical ...”