“... the stricken village or town ... This is Gavin Ewart, who adds: If you’re accident-prones you may hear those dread tones and meet that baleful eye! There are also substantial essays on our political culture, on economic and social policy, on defence and foreign affairs. Collectively, what they propose is a new polity based upon a redefined notion of ...”

“... supremo, Magnus Linklater, as well as by the two members of the Observer’s investigative unit, David Leigh and Paul Lashmar. I added my voice to theirs, urging vigilance and caution. To no avail, however – and perhaps understandably. On Saturday, 11 January 1986, Donald Trelford, the editor of the Observer, had spent a lot of time closeted in the ...”

“... but as heroic underdogs. They were shown on television being shot and beaten by Israeli soldiers. David the good guy was now a Palestinian, and nasty Goliath an Israeli. The women and the old joined in to support the uprising, and all were soon aware that the use of stones rather than guns was their strongest political card in the vital game to win the ...”

“... intent. A manila envelope made in and posted from a Manila recently under the control of Marcos may contain an explosive device, particularly if the cover of the book it ostensibly contains has a savage Nicholas Garland illustration of a wild horseman wielding a bloody scimitar, surrounded by the decapitated victims of his havoc. If the poems of Manila ...”

“... Scotland in which it flourished, by the English. It was subverted from within by a disloyal Scot, David Hume, the first of two chapters on whom is indeed called ‘Hume’s Anglicising Subversion’. Hume is conventionally regarded not only as the greatest of British philosophers but also as one of the most amiable and personally admirable, but ...”

“... you know that your faith, your assurance, are genuine and permanent; Calvin acknowledges that men may have temporary faith. But since the gift of faith comes before repentance it is no good looking inside yourself for signs that will justify assurance, or trying to verify your faith by good works. For Beza and Perkins, the problem is how a man can know that ...”

“... Even on the worst scenario, it does not make much sense to infuriate people, however stupid they may have been, at a time when they are worried sick. Public scolding of the Russians made even less sense when it was confirmed that scientists employed by government agencies were involved in telephone conversations with their Russian counterparts throughout ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... refuted the conclusion of the argument from design, without challenging its premises. Nature may be well designed, much as Darwin’s creationist predecessors thought, but good design doesn’t require a designer. Thus John Maynard Smith once defined biological adaptations as the sorts of trait that natural theologians would have mistaken as evidence for ...”

“... war and those now towards the threat of global heating. Most of us think that something unpleasant may soon happen, but we are as confused as we were in 1938 over what form it will take and what to do about it. Our response so far is just like that before the Second World War, an attempt to appease. The Kyoto agreement was uncannily like that of Munich, with ...”

“... David Runciman, Neal Ascherson, James Butler, T.J. Clark, Jonathan Coe, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Daniel Finn, Dawn Foster, Jeremy Harding, Colin Kidd, Ross McKibbin, Philippe Marlière, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Jan-Werner Müller, Susan Pedersen, J.G.A. Pocock, Nick Richardson, Nicholas Spice, Wolfgang Streeck, Daniel TrillingDavid RuncimanSo who​ is to blame? Please don’t say the voters: 17,410,742 is an awful lot of people to be wrong on a question of this magnitude ...”

“... a British government would do, one need look no further than Hong Kong in spring 1989. In late May, a sixth of its population twice marched for democracy, and they meant democracy in Hong Kong as well as mainland China. We are liable to forget that the British Government denied the vote to the people of Hong Kong until negotiations for the return of the ...”

“... short of this last reservation, but the Sustainable Development Commission insists that markets may look very different in future and we shouldn’t assume that our strong ‘financial and service sectors’ will enable us to access food from around the world indefinitely. Better to arrest the decline of British farming: the carnival of food awareness in ...”

“... in Jameson, not Mandel – is a mark of immaturity, an outworn college creed. The thing itself may grow old with us, but the term can’t be used by middle-aged grown-ups participating in the real world (that is to say, the surface of the earth, minus college campuses). The same may go for ‘postmodernism’, a word ...”

“... David Gibson was a man stiff and parsonical; by all accounts the sort of man who got things done. You could say he was obsessed with ridding Glasgow of its slums, with turning them into something bright and high and unquestionably modern. That’s what he wanted, and he’d already made vast advances towards getting it when he became convener of Glasgow Corporation’s housing committee in 1964 ...”