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“... whenever he could to attend meetings of kindred spirits, including journalists and writers such as Michael Foot, Tom Hopkinson (of Picture Post), Tom Harrisson (of Mass Observation), Alastair Forbes and Stephen King-Hall, some of whom became Observer contributors when Astor took charge. But that was years away. In the meantime he started to work for Louis ...”

“... Hull. His loss isn’t the only topic in Matthew’s poems, or in the poems of his twin brother, Michael, but it is one for which both poets are known – widely known, in the US, as poets go. They have now been introduced to the UK in an unusually designed volume: Brother (Faber, £10.99) contains ten of Michael’s and ...”

“... if they have the death penalty in New York. Matthau says no, and Shaw places the side of his foot against the live rail, electrocuting himself before our eyes in short order. Even Matthau is impressed. But then there is another scene, which not only doesn’t but couldn’t appear in the new movie, because it cares only about Travolta among the criminals ...”

“... a serum that converted him instantly from an asthmatic weakling into an all too credible hulk, a foot taller than he was, and ready to pose for a body-building ad. But this is offered to us as the magic of science rather than part of the wilder stretches of scientific fantasy. ‘Magic’ is perhaps the key word here, or whatever word we find for ...”

“... there was a scuffle, a mirror broke, Rana was severely wounded in the head, the intruder cut his foot and left a sock behind, along with quite a lot of money, as if paying for a service. We assume a rape took place, although all the intruder says, when he is finally found and confronted with his act, is: ‘I was tempted.’ Rana, understandably we might ...”

“... such close attention to Napoleon at work, hesitating, deciding on particular moves of cavalry or foot soldiers, delaying action because he doesn’t like the rain, and leading charges himself as if in a famous painting. It is also clear, in this movie at least, that if Blücher’s Prussian army had arrived a little later – we are witnesses to its delay ...”

“... is well summed up in a conversation about the Supergun with the very right-wing junior minister Michael Fallon. Fallon’s view was that Britain ‘should be making them – the Superguns – and selling them to everyone’. ‘For nearly two years,’ Clark reveals, ‘the FCO section of Cabinet minutes was a long moan about how the Iraqi army was on its ...”

“... very happy at Shrewsbury, especially in my last year, when Trench was replaced at School House by Michael Charlesworth, a kind and courteous man, quite the opposite of his predecessor. It is not true, as naive left-wing rhetoric sometimes has it, that British public schools dragoon their boys into rigid and orthodox opinions. At Shrewsbury in the ...”

“... A considerable amount of research has been carried out into the practice in recent years. Michael Ebner’s Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy (2010) used hundreds of archival files to piece together the experience of everyday Italians under the dictatorship and showed that torture and beatings were common in confino, food scarce and of poor ...”

“... on 78 records, 48 of them LPs. The compliments paid to him have been extravagant and impressive. Michael Foot sees resemblances to both Chaplin and Swift, describing him as ‘a comic genius’. The tribute is topped by Robert Graves, for whom Spike is ‘a great genius’. The Monty Python team are cited as finding him not just the original precursor ...”

“... work had been done and everybody’s summer wasn’t being wasted in a Norfolk hell-hole.’ Michael, her husband and the children’s stepfather, is a university lecturer, who plans to spend the summer having illicit sex whenever possible with his latest favourite student, Philippa Knott, whose mobile number he keyed into his phone before the end of ...”

“... was a tape-recorded conversation between Hamilton and the First Secretary to the Treasury, Michael Heseltine, in which Hamilton denied any ‘financial relationship’ with Ian Greer. Greer knew he had paid, and realised his fellow plaintive would be exposed in court as a liar. He told Hamilton he wanted to fight the case separately, with a new set of ...”

“... of his master. But here, with exemplary discretion, Pasolini shows us three men huddled at the foot of a tree, not symbolically inattentive, but literally asleep like actual people, and when they wake and are rebuked they are merely, humanly puzzled. They won’t understand their defection till later, and Pasolini’s image lets us understand this, catches ...”

“... an avatar of otherness, complete with long tail, striped skin, blue face, flat nose and an extra foot or two of height. Our hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), likes the role especially because in his human form he has lost the use of his legs, and as his avatar he can behave like the hero of a Japanese comic or a kung fu movie. There’s a lot of archery ...”

“... most extraordinary chocolate-maker the world has ever seen!’ For many years no outsider has set foot in the factory. Plagued by industrial espionage, Mr Wonka discharged his entire work-force and has apparently replaced them by a scab troop of midgets – ‘apparently’, because these homuncules, no more than knee high, never set ...”