“... nuclear energy or Mr Scargill’s dirty, polluting, nasty piece of coal?’ ‘When I was a young man working down the pit,’ Scargill replied, ‘I occasionally suffered from dyspepsia and heartburn. I relieved the symptoms by sucking on a piece of coal, as it is a good antacid. I will eat this dirty lump of coal if this gentleman will eat his uranium ...”

“... weeks (11 March) my appointment came through. I was examined, and referred for a barium meal and X-ray as well as more tests. A further nine days for that, and on 20 March I presented myself for the results. The consultant told me, kindly, that I had acute ulcerating colitis and should come into hospital at once. It seems that I was quite ill (a ‘very ...”

“... on various crucial points. He thought his father was a French farmer; in fact he was a Birmingham man. Sam fatefully told him that her new boyfriend was a policeman, presumably to discourage Moat from bothering them; he was actually a karate instructor. The second difficulty is that Hankinson has had to leave out many aspects of the wider story: ‘If an ...”

“... Iraqi opposition, it has always been a motley bunch. Its leader Ahmad Chalabi may be a brilliant man but he has been found guilty of fraud in Jordan and has no real constituency beyond Paul Wolfowitz’s Pentagon office. He and his helpers – Kanan Makiya, for example, the man who said that news of the merciless ...”

“... more pronounced when the book became a successful TV series in 1988. Harry Perkins was played by Ray McAnally, who seemed entirely plausible as a man swept to office on a wave of popular affection, notwithstanding his radical programme (quit Nato, dismantle Trident, take down the press barons). The trouble was no one in ...”

“... units, Ian Bremner writes in the Introduction to the very useful collection he has edited with Ray Taras, institutions were set up identically, with replications of not only party but also cultural, scientific and educational facilities. Economic policy also appeared egalitarian in structure, based on the premise of giving to each according to his needs ...”

“... brain freezing and colonising the universe. Bostrom was also a member, as were Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil and Julian Assange. This gave the charismatic and persuasive Yudkowsky clout and access to a wider circle of rich libertarians and tech ultras, notably Peter Thiel. Yudkowsky introduced Thiel to Hassabis; Thiel became a founding investor in ...”

“... my success were equal to my energy,’ he remarked at the age of 55, ‘I should be a great man.’ He was also a compulsive writer. Ten years later, aware of advancing age, he told his son: ‘I finished on Thursday the novel I was writing, and on Friday I began another. Nothing really frightens me but the idea of enforced idleness. As long as I can ...”

“... moving car from the front, outside the windscreen, the camera slightly off to the driver’s left. Ray Liotta, looking young and spruce but tired, is at the wheel, his face well lit. Robert de Niro, in the passenger seat, is asleep. Joe Pesci, in the back seat, is nodding off. A thumping noise is heard, and Liotta says, ‘Jimmy.’ De Niro wakes up. Liotta ...”

“... all good biographies, it conveys as much or more about the world the subject lived in as about the man himself. In that respect, it reminded me of Rupert Hart-Davis’s biography of Hugh Walpole, which can be read with pleasure and profit again and again though it is not entirely easy to see why. Neither Hugh Walpole nor Duff Cooper (who turns out to have been ...”

“... are no places left. Come back next month …’ When I was eight, I went to a school run by a man from Chad. He taught anyone who couldn’t go to a Saudi school. I was there four years until my father got ill. Then my brother and I, we had to start working. We washed cars and sold in the street cold water, prayer mats and beads – you can make good ...”

“... parlours, that’s why. You listen to those buildings sometime. You can almost hear them chewing, man. Jed duly joins up with ‘the womb gang’, to make war on death. Again, the novel’s message is written in letters a foot high, like a Brechtian slogan. As Evelyn Waugh observed fifty years ago, the only problem the Americans haven’t been able to solve ...”

“... trousers.’ The jester here was Ian St John, who from the very start has worn the air of a man who has been given a bum posting – his Group having, in the main, gone in for timid goalless draws. Sad, this, because St John is one of the few ‘experts’ who really does seem to have some expertise, who now and then sees things we don’t see, spots ...”

“... on both jaws there is potential for deeper damage. As Schutt’s dentist puts it, pointing at an X-ray of one of his upper molars, ‘on the other side of that sinus is your brain.’ In the lower jaw, infections offer a route for bacteria to be transmitted from an abscessed tooth to the floor of the mouth. From there, they can speed through the ...”

“... a 29-year-old stripper and single mother who has been given a double life sentence for murdering a man who stalked her. The year is 2003. Her first parole hearing will be in 37 years’ time. She has been in jail for two years already, long enough to learn not to say much and not to complain. She has also learned not to cry, a lesson she received on the night ...”