“... role East of Suez’, but he was sceptical of Nato’s nuclear strategy and of the concept of Britain’s independent deterrent. After 1968, he was a political freelance, and Cosgrave makes large claims on his behalf: that he supplied the victory margin for the Tories in 1970 despite the party leader, and that he destroyed that leader, Edward Heath, in ...”

“... being asked to write for the London Review of Books is that it is one of the few publications in Britain that allow a writer to return to old ground. Most papers insist on the semblance, at least, of some new slant, if not on new facts. Otherwise it’s yesterday’s news. The situation has, I believe, dire consequences for public life. Those in power come ...”

“... GPO Film Unit on a freelance basis, mainly, it seems, because he was hard up. He went on to become Britain’s most admired wartime documentary film-maker, and although his is far from a household name, his critical reputation has for decades been extremely high; Lindsay Anderson, an influential champion of his work, considered him ‘the only real poet the ...”

“... I learned that his near neighbours were two of the most socially committed architects of postwar Britain, David and Mary Medd, who lived in a house they designed and built for themselves in the 1950s. The Medds were leading figures in the Hertfordshire county schools programme. Using a prefabricated system, first to build single-storey primary schools and ...”

“... are the reports of the Dardanelles Commission to an understanding of the First World War? Britain was not primarily at war with Turkey, but with Germany. The Turks had become involved only because they shared Germany’s hostility to Russia. For the Western Allies, however, the war against the Kaiser had taken an unwelcome turn by the end of ...”

“... an ideology that would be acceptable to a diverse population under siege’. She makes use of Ian McLaine’s Ministry of Morale, but has also considered the Home Intelligence Reports, Home Morale Emergency Committee Reports, Morale: Summary of Daily Reports and so forth, where the authorities’ anxious manipulations can be seen at work. It was a two-way ...”

“... The unseen spectator who was most involved in Pope John Paul’s progress through Britain, formerly in partibus infidelium, was the spirit of John Henry Newman, dead these 92 years, who doubtless observed the proceedings with mixed feelings. Surely Newman, a man of retiring temperament, would have been horrified by the crowds and the publicity which for the moment turned the search for a Via Media into a media event ...”

“... would say all the things Mr Bower wanted to say in the first book but was prevented from by Britain’s tough libel laws. Unfortunately most of the new things he has to say – though, for cognoscenti of Maxwell, fascinating enough – pale into insignificance when set alongside the enormity of the financial scandal which has subsequently emerged. Of ...”

“... bloke of a building … cantilevered pot belly poking out over tight trousers’. Its architect, Ian Simpson, has a magnificent and probably iconic light entertainer’s bouffant. His work, too, is on an epic orchestral scale: fittingly brash and boorish, now thrilling, now corny. Like the late Ricardo Bofill he suggests that singular talent and gleeful ...”

“... as it happened, the number of seats held reflected votes cast much more accurately than in Great Britain, but this was cold comfort to the representatives of the Catholic minority, who had no chance of forming a government. Faulkner had therefore proposed, belatedly, that there should be three parliamentary committees, with the chairmanship of two guaranteed ...”

“... a cameo role as an air-force officer who questions the wisdom of the scheme. In the meantime, Ian Colvin, a journalist whose investigation into the wartime coup had prompted Montagu to come out first with his authorised version, published The Unknown Courier. So the tale has been told before, but Ben Macintyre has done a more thorough and readable job of ...”

“... were now no more than minor functionaries and tax collectors for the native commissioners. (Hence Ian Smith’s insistence that the chiefs were the ‘true’ leaders and spokesmen of their people.) The guerrillas also got advice from the mediums about bushcraft. David Lan quotes three former Zanla guerrillas: The spirit mediums gave us many good ideas. The ...”

“... terms, the novel is modern. The most influential version of this argument was formulated by Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (1957), who found in the writing of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding a new and radical preoccupation with the here-and-now. The name Watt gave this preoccupation was ‘formal realism’: the premise, or primary convention, that ...”

“... economics editor, has produced a book which is part show-biz – it carries a passionate puff from Ian McEwan on the front cover and leapt straight into the bestseller list – and part political event: it clearly aims to provide a sweeping economic and political platform for Labour, has been elaborated with the help of Tony Blair’s adviser, David ...”

“... for the Gladstone Memorial Essay Prize, which was entitled ‘The State and the Railways in Great Britain 1823 – 63’ and which contained four hundred of them.At what point, I wonder, could anyone have seen it coming? The advance, I mean to say, of a mediocre but ruthless man without qualities? Philip Ziegler’s book charts the boy Wilson’s ghastly ...”