“... according to which she should weigh between 125 and 165 pounds. Is anybody making us read these magazines: the same magazines, by the way, which order us to be constantly reaching orgasm? (No word on that from the surgeon general’s office.) But is living in a culture that produces fashion magazines really a source of unprecedented misery? In ...”

“... is late for the scholarship pupil plot in Britain and Ireland. John McGahern, Edna O’Brien, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams: they were all born between the end of the First World War and the early 1930s, and published their stories of class alienation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It’s a bit late, too, for the middle-class unmarried motherhood ...”

“... a TV crew reassured us that we were still in the real world. The tall, London-based CNN presenter Richard Quest, in tailored trenchcoat, waited impressively for his gear. CNN was here for some really significant story – the marriage of Sir Paul McCartney and anti-landmine campaigner Heather Mills, perhaps; a shade less probably, the wedding in St Eugene’s ...”

“... slow swing replaced by a nocturne. The station cut in again with a learned authority, ‘Professor Richard Pierson, famous astronomer’, direct from the Princeton observatory to explain the discharge and point out that Mars could not support intelligent life. Pierson, however, confessed that he could not explain the regularity of the emissions. More ...”

“... studying socialism; fired by Henry George, he was instructed mainly by Marx, whom he actually read (in French). Soon he was an indispensable Fabian. He worked like the devil – it is quite a relief to find him talking about his ‘inveterate laziness’, and to learn that on some days he ‘did practically nothing’. But on such days he must have been ...”

“... been all the more impressive. This is the biggest exercise in political rehabilitation since Richard Nixon – with worthier results, it is to be hoped. It has not happened because of any random stroke of luck but, as we have seen, because Jenkins’s course has had a clear rationale. He has had luck, of course, but mainly the sort of luck that ...”

“... to meet Roosevelt and his entourage, they often asked Professor Denis Brogan what they should read in preparation. They expected to be recommended some work on American politics, but Brogan always suggested the memoirs of Saint-Simon. Roosevelt ran a court, and the danger of a court is that the ego of the monarch will be inflated by the adulation of those ...”

“... it might be funniest if gangsters did have just these conversations, and why shouldn’t they? Richard Nixon and his aides turned out to talk exactly like the President Philip Roth had invented in Our Gang. Tarantino wrote Natural Born Killers after True Romance and before Reservoir Dogs. He says he hasn’t seen the Oliver Stone movie, and while we may ...”

“... didn’t compose a word of it apart from the quotations from speeches, and probably didn’t even read it all. He headed the Soviet Union, as leader of the Communist Party, from 1964 until his death in 1982. Before that, he had served as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet for several years. But no insatiable lust for power, no gift for ...”

“... holding her own under questioning by prelates and canons. Without formal education, unable to read or write, she responded with such luminous clarity that when she repeated that her voices had returned to her, the scribe was moved to exclaim, ‘Responsio mortifera’ (‘a fatal reply’), in the margins of the court record. Benedict XVI recently advised ...”

“... by such as Julian Huxley and Joseph Needham. They had not lasted. The writer just quoted is Richard Hoggart, whose memories of his time in Paris are not fond. The picture he paints of a Unesco General Conference – the kind taking place through the door just to the left of Picasso’s mural – seems relevant. Meetings usually start late. There is no ...”

“... of context or, at best, misinterpreted … For the record,’ she added, ‘I have never heard or read that there was any CIA relationship, direct or indirect, with Oswald … I do not recall saying that the withholding of FBI information from CIA Mexico Station was deliberate, nor do I believe it.’ But Roman never sent her four-page letter to the ...”

“... with ageing veterans about their experiences, asked them to fill out extensive questionnaires, and read letters they had sent to their wives, girlfriends, parents and siblings, as well as their (far more explicit) journals. But she also wanted to know how the war was discussed at home, especially after France’s defeat, when appelés were scrambling to ...”

“... his credit) he stumbles several times when he has to broadcast this absurdity. 4 April. Asked to read The Good Companions for a possible production I find I can only get as far as the end of Act I. It’s interesting, though, in that it’s Priestley on one of his favourite themes, that of escape and escape from the North particularly. Act I, Scene I ends ...”

“... the Anglican Bishop of Stepney, Tom Cook, former Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, and Richard Stone, Chairman of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. The Lawrences decided that Sir William was an unsuitable chairman, given his record in immigration proceedings. (The Observer also objected to Edmund Lawson, Counsel to the Inquiry, on the grounds ...”