“... thing on occasion, for all its turns and denials. Calling her ‘the leaderene’, as Norman St John-Stevas did, wasn’t candid, or apt, or funny. The old fellows were bound to wish to hit back from time to time at the Handbag, and they did manage to get rid of it, none too soon, in the end.12 April 2013 Servicemen are starting to wonder more and more ...”

“... their own party on particular pieces of legislation. This process, which really got started under John Major, continued and in some ways accelerated under Blair. One of these backbench rebellions, on university top-up fees at the beginning of 2004, very nearly cost him his job. This new-found assertiveness means that at present the government probably has to ...”

“... nurse rejoicing over the death of the suitors to describe his feelings when women cheered at the downing of Allied aircraft over Hamburg (he had always opposed National Socialism). If the end of the Odyssey lends itself with difficulty to the idea of a good homecoming, it is not least because the finale is, as Hall puts it, a bloodbath. Eurycleia finds ...”

“... the Holy Grail for the Knights Not Round the Table – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Redwood et al – and they have devoted their adult lives to it. But they have more in mind than this. They hope also to undo the constitutional and administrative reforms of the Blair years. What they want to achieve is a simplification of democracy. The ...”

“... as ‘bizarre’, in that the interview took place on the day her husband, Peter Robinson, went to Downing Street to accept the role of First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly ‘and there really was a sense that Iris had stolen his thunder’. Black, who was hired as her political adviser, does not say when he decided to keep, rather than ...”

“... Doris, their mum and Alma’s best friend, Rose (the lodger’s sister-in law) come and go, downing innumerable cups of tea, some of them flying from Alma’s hand before she can drink. A vicar and a local GP turn up, both friends of Fodor. So many bystanders throng the pavement outside the house that a policeman is posted at the front door. The doormat ...”

“... but there is, as far as I know, no evidence for this. Of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II Laqueur can only comment that ‘the extent of Bulgarian involvement cannot be proven in a court of law,’ as if only an excess of legal fastidiousness – rather than a complete lack of evidence – stands in the way of our believing this ...”

“... choice between parties. The Conservative share in the polls in 1987 on the day Tim Bell rode into Downing Street on a white charger was 44 per cent. One week later, after the expenditure of all the serious money on advertising, their share of votes came out at ... 43 per cent. It wasn’t the media in 1987 which gave Mrs Thatcher her third historic ...”

“... That she was toeing the Party line didn’t occur to me, though it did to my companion, John Scaife, another budding conscript, who was much more scathing on the subject and cynical about the tears. 2 February. Ten days or so ago I did an interview for the Today programme in connection with the revival of The History Boys now playing at ...”

“... this book. The result is that much of the history recounted here is airless, trapped inside the Downing Street bubble. This is especially true of the struggle that Moore says resulted in ‘the most important single victory of her career’. The miners’ strike of 1984-5 is portrayed as a do or die contest between the government and those who sought to ...”

“... Harper.The relationship began to break down in the 1990s. In 1992 Ken Clarke, home secretary under John Major, announced an ambitious plan to reform policing. He described the police to Harper as ‘the last great unreformed Victorian public service’: excessively bureaucratic (the Met most of all, with five senior ranks of officer rather than the usual ...”

“... to Greece. Tony mentions in the poem her absent friends: George Devine, Ron Eyre, Tony Richardson, John and John (Dexter and Osborne), and at the conclusion a cake is brought in and Jocelyn is crowned with laurels. It could be thought pretentious but since Jocelyn is so far from pretentious it seems both fitting and moving.I ...”

“... of my childhood. 10 February. Finish with some regret Frances Spalding’s book on the Pipers, John and Myfanwy, the latter figuring in The Habit of Art where she is to some extent disparaged. I’ve always been in two minds about Piper, liking him when I was young with his paintings ‘modern’ but representational enough to be acceptable, a view I ...”

“... part in this story, though classical architecture certainly was. Duveen’s favourite architect, John Russell Pope, supplied a mausoleum for the Huntingtons, adapted Frick’s townhouse as a public gallery and designed the National Gallery of Art. The increasingly difficult and radical character of modern art may have further reinforced these ...”

“... the difference between ‘beige’ and ‘bone’ at fifty yards that made her a natural diarist. John Updike said her ‘Talk of the Town’ pieces ‘helped put New York back into the New Yorker’. Her first column, in January 1954, was about a careless dry cleaner, and began the dispatches from ‘a rather long-winded lady’ whom the New Yorker heard ...”