“... to her local bookseller and read a lot of fiction, poetry and theology. Her husband too was a keen reader and they enjoyed discussing which characters they admired and loathed.One novel gripped them more than all the rest: Richardson’s gigantic Clarissa, published serially (with agonising gaps) between December 1747 and December 1748. At the end of ...”

“... army who had lost his family in the Holocaust for killing a German during the war. Haines is keen now to emphasise the moments when he contradicted his boss at the Mirror. But Maxwell was always one step ahead. When asked why he wanted Haines to write an account of his life, Maxwell said: ‘Two reasons: one, because I could rely on him to do a good ...”

“... exploit the fears of all sections of society who suffer from Conservative attempts to demolish it. Peter Shore displays the greatest awareness of such an approach when he writes what is a remarkably frank eulogy of both Labour and Conservative governments after 1945. Gerald Kaufman, who, incidentally, is going to restore Rutland and the Soke of ...”

“... followers to create ‘institutions or out-patient clinics … where treatment shall be free’. Keen to contribute to a better postwar world, Freud hoped that one day these charitable clinics would be state funded – ‘the neuroses,’ he insisted, ‘threaten public health no less than tuberculosis.’ Max Eitingon, the psychoanalyst who funded the first ...”

“... judge by this account, that Weekend World was creating its own network of clever, ambitious men. Peter Jay, Peter Mandelson, Christopher Hitchens, Brian Walden and their slightly geeky colleagues turned out to be a more influential and politically adept group than Panorama’s fist-fighting war reporters. And none was more ...”

“... synagogue. He was a profoundly devout man, and left Levy with both a deep religious faith and a keen wish to experience a wider world. The portrait of the pious, financially straitened, hard-working Jewish Hackney of his childhood is interesting, and shows a life which has moved elsewhere: the synagogue where he studied for his bar mitzvah is now a mosque ...”

“... dramas to help out with under-financed higher-risk productions. Similarly, BBC Broadcast was keen that the drama department shouldn’t slip co-production money between projects, or get its hands on the profits from commercial sales of popular BBC dramas abroad. This war of attrition ended with Corporate Centre withdrawing its battered bean-counters in ...”

“... shown up by Whicher’s energy – briefed the press against him. Constance’s defence lawyer, Peter Edlin of Bristol, accused him of too much ‘professional eagerness in the pursuit of the criminal’. It was ‘improper’, Edlin said, to question Constance’s schoolfriends. Edlin succeeded in persuading the magistrates that the case had no ...”

“... happen here. But the prevailing breeziness in the UK seems to me ill-founded, and I’m not alone. Peter Olson, until recently the chairman and CEO of Random House, wrote in Publishers Weekly last month: ‘While 2008 ended on a disappointing and even discouraging note for many in the book industry, the outlook for the new year is even bleaker. One-time ...”

“... were when Brown took over. ‘Master of his universe’, Rawnsley wrote in the Observer then; Peter Hennessy could recall nothing on this scale since ‘the cross-party war cabinet in 1940’; and Jackie Ashley thought Brown’s early success showed ‘how deeply he can reach into Tory England’. By September last year, however, Martin Kettle was summing ...”

“... after people. This is very different from the neoliberal state, whose job was characterised by Peter Mandelson, Bill Clinton and other Third Wayers in the 1990s as ‘steering not rowing’. The target political audience of the neoliberal politician was always the ‘hard-working family’. This imaginary unit had ‘aspiration’ and wanted to ‘get ...”

“... 1960 Williams was playing with Fenella Fielding in the revue Pieces of Eight (largely written by Peter Cook) at the Apollo Theatre, and his diary entry for the 27th reads: ‘The show in evening went well, till Madam decided to ad lib one line before the tag in “Spies”. Of course it threw me completely. This is the last straw. I’ve reported it to the ...”

“... read. To this day, many Glaswegians would agree.In 2022 a London-based urban designer called Peter Kelly set up a campaign group called Replace the M8. Kelly believes there is a nostalgia for ‘the completeness of the 19th-century city’. What does he want? Tunnels, he says, though he is aware that some cultural revolutionaries want anything resembling ...”

“... a decision to deny them asylum. But even the social security advisory committee set up by Peter Lilley doubted his claim that this would constitute a saving of £200 million. It also warned that ‘extreme hardship’ was likely to result from the legislation. The proposals nonetheless took effect from February. Last month, the Court of Appeal ruled ...”

“... scandalous … He has made a will leaving them to me plus £500.’ In the end they were left to Peter Coats, Channon’s boyfriend of many years, who allowed the publication in 1967 of a drastically abbreviated and expurgated edition, incompetently edited by Robert Rhodes James, which was greeted with widespread ridicule and contemptuous comparison with ...”