“... and to see him ultimately as a martyr for the cause, a cross between St Sebastian and Kevin Barry, which is how Stephen Rea made him appear in Terry Eagleton’s play St Oscar. Kiberd’s reading remains tentative and convincing, but he is forced to leave a great deal out, such as Wilde’s homosexuality. In taking only the aspects of Wilde and Shaw ...”

“... that fate which claimed the young queen as another victim. And that he should live to see another day, whereas she could not, was not so obvious an advantage since, as every new penny proved, the day that he lived to see was only another day on which he was obliged to take a life; and ...”

“... what I take to be a narrow and presumably little-used road over from Hawes. It’s a spectacular day with deep snowdrifts still on the tops where we stop to look at the Roman road snaking over Cam Fell and down to Bainbridge. Then through Oughtershaw and along Langstrothdale by what is called Oughtershaw Beck but is in fact the Wharfe, both the Wharfe and ...”

“... discovery and transformation into a living legend has been told often enough: most notably by Barry Paris in his biography of 1995. Born on 18 September 1905, Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was raised by respectable, hard-working parents in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Stockholm. Her education ended with her father’s early death, and by the age of ...”

“... in New York, it ended with the election of Richard Nixon. Friedman had been closely involved with Barry Goldwater’s reactionary, anti-desegregationist campaign in 1964, and was now an adviser to Nixon; the New York Times called him a ‘radical conservative’. He was also the foremost advocate of monetarism, an avowedly anti-Keynesian approach to ...”

“... its readiness to dictate terms to his government. In that event, Cromer replied, before election day there would be no sterling reserves left. In which case, said Wilson, they would let sterling float. In which case, shouted Cromer, there would be an international financial crisis (there wouldn’t, of course: Britain floated the pound without difficulty in ...”

“... that carry the film so adroitly to its end. This film nearly ends on a miserable Christmas Day, just as Made for Each Other nearly ends on a miserable New Year’s Eve. To be shut out from a scene where all others are celebrating is one of Stewart’s typical fates, the other side of his good cheer. Still, this is a Christmas movie, frankly modelled on ...”

“... 1980s, and Phyllis Schlafly, the author of A Choice Not an Echo, written in support of the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. Anti-feminism, anti-equal rights – Schlafly was both and a lot more. Her funeral in 2016 was attended by Donald Trump. During his campaign, Buchanan said: ‘What we have is a lawless situation on the southern border of the United ...”

“... Not until nearly five months later, on 13 February 1986, was the report forwarded to Sir Barry Shaw, the DPP in Belfast. Meanwhile things were happening back on the mainland which were calculated to undermine Stalker’s position and to delay – if not entirely dismantle – his inquiry. In the same month – September 1985 – that Stalker ...”

“... work. Nor has he read Unredacted in its entirety. ‘I have enough problems,’ he said. ‘One day I’ll write my own account and we’ll compare notes.’ I asked him whether he thinks he might have been unwittingly used by the Democrats to launder baseless assertions planted by Clinton insiders such as Dolan to make them look like the products of ...”

“... an effort.’ One of the first prints to reveal something of his political animus was Six-Pence a Day, a poster-like appeal against recruitment for the American war in 1775. The work that followed would be notable for its candid presumption that public figures are fallibly human, therefore corruptible, and no single glimpse is likely to tell the whole ...”

“... Reagan’s cinematic imagination was key. In November 1983, ABC aired the made-for-TV movie The Day After, which powerfully evoked the impact of a nuclear strike on Kansas City, Missouri, and nearby Lawrence, Kansas. Reagan watched it twice, and it left him ‘greatly depressed’. We have ‘to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a ...”

“... typical correspondents are his business agents in the Greek islands, his banker friend Charles Barry in Genoa, and the Greek Committee in London. The tone is, according to your taste, practical or already middle-aged. Perhaps, as Marchand suggests, the Greek leader Prince Mavrocordatos was flattering Byron and encouraging him to spend more of his money ...”

“... Raphael gets around to a little scepticism about the word ‘genius’, but rather late in the day, on page 158 to be precise. He is convinced Kubrick is a great director, but doesn’t do much to show us why, and while his epigrammatic analyses of Kubrick’s character are clever and plausible, they have the air of self-contained fictions, unruffled by ...”

“... enemies of British rule in Northern Ireland. I heard Hill’s name spoken on the radio the day he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of five people at Guildford and another two at Woolwich. The judge recommended that he be released only in the event of grave illness or extreme old age. Paul Hill, aged 21, had in effect been sentenced to ...”