“... was not a reason to reject it here. After all, in this case it was precisely what he wanted. Even Bill Cash, the most die-hard Eurosceptic of them all, had in 2011 advocated a three-way choice in any referendum: between stay, leave and ‘renegotiate’. Cameron says of his thinking in 2012, when he first started to contemplate an EU referendum, that ‘when ...”

“... gone in, the undertakers with a policeman looking on just shouldering out the coffin. Since the bill is £40 I feel I need a receipt but while the driver ransacks his cab for pad and pencil the policeman saunters over: ‘The body is waiting to go in, sir.’ We make an undignified dash for the church where, hearing the door open, the congregation begin to ...”

“... renamed himself after a character on the 1970s television comedy The Brady Bunch. A graduate of Brown and a Rhodes scholar, he cut state funding for higher education by 80 per cent and instituted a law allowing the teaching of Creationism in science classes. Although Louisiana is one of the poorest states, Jindal remained firm in his opposition to ...”

“... the States last September and aired, in edited form, on BBC 4 two months later – has only one: Bill Malone, whose book Country Music USA: A Fifty-Year History (1968) provided the template for Burns’s documentary.‘Going to a dance was sort of like going back home to mama’s, or to grandma’s, for Thanksgiving,’ Malone says, eight minutes in.Country ...”

“... many passengers from the Ealing area would use Crossrail in preference to the Underground. A bill was submitted to Parliament in 1991, and reluctantly thrown out, because, as in the 1970s, there was a recession and so no available funds. In 2001, Cross London Rail Links, a company set up by the newly formed Transport for London and the Strategic Rail ...”

“... down’ the border if the number of migrant encounters exceeded certain thresholds. Perhaps the bill wasn’t harsh enough for him. More likely, a ‘secure’ border is not in his interest ahead of the election: he wants voters to fear an invasion from the Global South – ‘shithole countries’, as he called them in 2018. As president, Trump tried to ...”

“... many more bouncers and to alter his line of attack away from leg stump to that of the batsman, Bill Voce’ – his bowling partner and Nottinghamshire colleague –’ following suit. As they did so, Jardine moved more fielders across to the leg side and by the close of the innings in my opinion Bodyline had been born.’ So there it was: the triumph ...”

“... and myths. I’ve even been told, by a country grocer, that I couldn’t buy eggs in a brown paper-bag any more ‘because of the Common Maaarket’. Perhaps it’s natural for a latecomer to the Community to feel uncomfortable, struggling to get alterations in a ready-made suit of policies which feels rather a tight fit. Moral: be a founder-member ...”

“... from the state, made out to my son, for £1024. The cheque isn’t actually signed by Gordon Brown, but it might as well be. The Child Trust Fund was a New Labour manifesto promise from 2001, passed into law in January 2005, giving every child born after 1 September 2002 a lump sum of £250, to compound until their eighteenth birthday. (My son qualified ...”

“... shone like a tray of diamonds. Lloyd George got the message of that day. And the Rent Restrictions Bill was not long in marking the books. Effie liked to say they had given Lloyd George something to talk about. They gave him a subject: housing. But Effie was like Lloyd George in that way. She had needed something too. The women of Govan gave her a subject; a ...”

“... he said, “I want a new one.” The one he wanted cost £900. We bought it.’Nicholas Paget-Brown​ , who was then the leader of the council, lives alone not far from the Fulham Road. His gentle manners precede him, in the style of a decently prepped, slightly fogeyish man of the 1950s, and he acts as if he might find the modern world fascinating were ...”

“... are born. Are we really free? Or is free-will and responsibility an illusion? In July 1978, Louise Brown precipitated and focused some of these concerns. She was born after an entirely normal pregnancy, but from a conception that took place in a laboratory dish. Moral or not? Legal or not? Playing God? Her existence was made possible by the work of Patrick ...”

“... on too many a wearisome evening in the theatre. I have never been bored by Osborne – well, by Bill Maitland a little, but that was meant. I often disagree with his plays but invariably find his tone of voice, however hectoring, much more sympathetic than the rage or the patronising ‘Oh dear, he’s at it again’ he still manages to provoke in an ...”

“... Representation. Another 23 per cent favour a Scottish Assembly and 34 per cent support a Bill of Rights. The adulation with which Mrs Thatcher was received by the party faithful, together with the somewhat mythical concept of ‘Thatcherism’, tended to disguise the extent to which Conservative ideas were a mishmash. The authors detect three ...”

“... at a washstand with ewers and professing mystification as to its function. A comic book about the Brown Family at the Crystal Palace showed Cannibal Islanders in native dress sitting opposite the family at table and asking greedily how much they wanted for little Johnny, under a sign saying ‘Soup à la Hottentot’. A spoof report on a visit to the ...”