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“... In​ 2015 Theresa May, who was then home secretary, announced that there would be an inquiry into undercover policing and the operation of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). This secret unit, whose purpose was to infiltrate subversive groups, was set up in 1968 as part of Special Branch in response to protests against the Vietnam War ...”

“... and torture across northern Scotland. Later, as they awaited beheading for ‘high treason’, Lord Balmerino and Lord Kilmarnock used their last moments together to dismiss the idea that Prince Charles Edward Stuart, their ‘bonnie prince’, could have signed such an order. They both ‘vehemently denied’ it before ...”

“... leaked out that at least three of the five men had recently handled nitroglycerine: a well-tried Home Office explosives test had proved positive on their hands. Within a day or two of the arrests, four of the men confessed to planting the bombs in one or other of the pubs. When the case finally came to trial at Lancaster in June 1975, it seemed open and ...”

“... of the great hurricane of revival. Oh for a tempest of power, a veritable cyclone of blessing, Lord, let it come! Eight years later, the preacher rose up in that enormous pulpit and waved a copy of a historical study which had just been published. ‘Brethren and sisters in Christ,’ he shouted, ‘here is a great book that tells the Truth about ...”

“... of the European force on whose bayonets British rule in the last resort depended. In the 1830s Lord William Bentinck’s economy-conscious administration and a more censorious European opinion stirred by Evangelical religion led to the discontinuance of many lock hospitals and to an attack on what Bishop Daniel Wilson called the ‘licensed ...”

“... Both quote from the memoirs of John Robert Clynes, Labour leader between 1921 and 1922 and lord privy seal in 1924. Reflecting on meeting George V, Clynes could ‘not help marvelling at the strange turn of Fortune’s wheel’ that had brought him and his colleagues ‘to this pinnacle beside the man whose forebears had been kings for so many splendid ...”

“... pleadings and opinions for signature when the typist was away. My head of chambers could recall Lord Darling, memorably insulted by the Birmingham Daily Argus in 1900, when he lectured the local press on how to report his decisions, as an impudent little man in horsehair who might have made a successful bus conductor, sitting in the 1930s on the judicial ...”

“... so much noisier than assemblies of schoolboys? It is wiser to keep away from both. Hardly back home than we went off again to Lancaster, where a literary week was in progress. I inaugurated it with a talk on History as Literature, which perhaps gave me some excuse for being there. The hall was so dark that I could not see the audience and, as a ...”

“... arrested her in flagrant abuse of their powers and given perjured evidence at her trial. Then the Home Secretary announced the abolition of the right to silence for detained persons held in police stations. Then a man who had been ‘verballed’ by West Midlands Police was awarded £70,000 in damages, after the fact that his interview notes had been forged ...”

“... struggling tenaciously, in her husband’s absence, to preserve her own integrity by defending her home and children against an intruder. Life goes on is a sequel to A Start in Life (1970 – not to be confused with a novel of the same title by Anita Brookner). In the earlier book Michael Cullen left working-class Nottingham for the metropolis, fell into the ...”

“... one of the members of the family who sympathised with her parents’ politics, has long made her home in New York. Her account of her childhood and of Lucan’s character is balanced, regretful and affectionate. Through her eyes the man begins to emerge from behind the cardboard cut-out, and it is her recollections and those of Lucan’s unnamed ...”

“... of the tranquillity after the terrible bombardments. Churchill himself took ‘easement’ at home and abroad as the prime goal of his postwar ministry. He wanted to ‘give the working man what he had never had – leisure. A four-day week and then three days’ fun.’ And the Attlee Welfare State was part of the deal. The old man proclaimed that ‘we ...”

“... in a Room with a Chime of Bells, ten Parrots and one Lady Westmorland to sitting in a cabinet with Lord Macaulay’. Melbourne might have been more scathing still about his latest biographer, Leslie Mitchell. Mitchell’s technique is to repeat – and repeat, and repeat again – his own unsympathetic spin on Melbourne’s well-charted weaknesses. His ...”

“... and offices followed for Buckingham: knight of the garter, Baron Whaddon and Viscount Villiers, lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, earl of Buckingham, privy councillor, marquis of Buckingham, and, in 1619, lord high admiral. This last office put Buckingham in control of England’s defences, and Buckingham did well in ...”

“... Coward’s reputation in the theatre became such that he had to assure nervous callers to his home: ‘I shan’t jump on you. I’m not the type,’ along with an assurance that there was a police station just across the road. Anxious about his mannerisms, he asked Marlene Dietrich to keep an eye on them: ‘I must not appear effeminate in any way. Do be ...”