“... province, the British military base at Camp Abu Naji was preparing for the night. Set at the northern end of the marshlands between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the camp is now abandoned and looted, but in May 2005 it was a busy centre of military operations. Amara has seen many reversals of fortune and opinion: it was once a hideout for anti-Saddam ...”

“... a meeting of irate Tory backbenchers in 1971. The MPs were unhappy about the BBC’s coverage of Northern Ireland, which, though fastidiously cautious, they deemed insufficiently patriotic. Swann’s line came from a draft, written four years earlier, of a report for the governors eventually published as Broadcasting and the Public Mood and intended to ...”

“... is a lot more relentless: if anything, she keeps chopping and changing long after they have gone home. She didn’t outsmart or outperform her enemies. She outstayed them. A lot has been made of her ability to function on four hours’ sleep a night. Moore indicates that this is something of a myth. No, she didn’t sleep much, but often this made her tetchy ...”

“... Gove appointed him lead non-executive director in the Department of Education. ‘When we got into office Paul Marshall was a Lib Dem man,’ a former Lib Dem MP told me. ‘By the time the coalition was over, he was a Gove man.’Marshall had never been the big Lib Dem donor portrayed in the media. In all, he gave the party ...”

“... believe, the Conservatives and their allies won 30 seats in Scotland, four in Wales and eight in Northern Ireland. This year the Conservatives won no seats in Scotland and Wales and they have long since parted company with the Ulster Unionists. The Liberal Democrats and the Celtic fringe thus turned what would in any case have been a heavy defeat into a ...”

“... unaccountable fall at the last Oxford fence; the decade-long penance of days working in the Patent Office and evenings in the British Museum writing papers savaging tenured classicists; then the serendipity of his appointment in 1892 – ‘picked out of the gutter’ – as professor of Latin at University College ...”

“... but they are all examples of failure (or of very limited success) – Cyprus, Lebanon, Belgium, Northern Ireland. It is not a very encouraging list. Even Austria-Hungary only got two systems going – inMoravia and Bukovina – and were still talking about starting on a similar plan for Bohemia when the First World War started. As Heribert Adam ...”

“... the begrudgery that went along with him being Famous Seamus. He once said that everyone in Ireland is famous, or at least familiar, and that, even when he was a schoolboy, being recognised led to banter and taunts. But his early success as a poet, catapulted almost overnight from the Kilkenny Magazine to the Faber list, and then invited to speak for ...”

“... conferences in the narrative, on the grounds that there is something more interesting going on in Northern Italy). Bradbury’s Villa Barolo is funded by the American Magno Foundation – offspring of an empire enriched by pharmaceuticals, oil and, one guesses, corporate crime. Magno’s sexy chairperson flies into the conference by private 727, which is ...”

“... by Henry VIII on his deathbed. Not far away is Harewood House (where I do not pee). It’s the home of the Lascelles family, an ancestor of which, John Lascelles, blew the gaffe on Catherine Howard, the king’s fifth wife, but was later culled himself in the purge of evangelicals during that dreadful monarch’s last years. I watch two of the now ...”

“... going in the opposite direction, heading to Lviv or Kyiv for Easter, or to assess whether their home cities were safe enough for them to move back. The women who were still arriving came from battlefield areas, such as Mariupol, Bucha or Kharkiv, or from Kramatorsk, which is under fire from missiles and rockets. The early wave of refugees had crossed in ...”

“... Robert Ford, and stabbed him to death. Ford was 15 years old and had just taken his girl-friend home after spending an evening at a local Citizens’ Band radio club. McCluskie, also 15, and Reynolds, 14, had spent the evening drinking and were on their way to a chip shop when they ran into their victim. It is barely worth speaking of anything as tangible ...”

“... bill of rights, part of the original policy behind the 1996 consultation paper Bringing Rights Home, which introduced the Human Rights Act. Now that the rights included in the European Convention on Human Rights have been brought home, is it time to start a family of new rights, and possibly of duties, to go with ...”

“... at Kew, and when he was stopped, lay on the ground and refused to budge, having to be carried home on his servants’ shoulders. A few days later, Dr Francis Willis unveiled his new purpose-built restraining chair, which George immediately dubbed my ‘Coronation Chair’. He might have been deprived of his wits, but he never lost his wit. He noted that ...”

“... were improperly admitted in evidence and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean the Home Secretary would either have to recommend they be pardoned or he would have to remit the case to the Court of Appeal. This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: it cannot be right that these actions should go any ...”