“... Vladimir Putin may or may not be dismantling Yeltsinism. But he is not dismantling ‘democracy’, for no such system existed in Russia before his accession to power. After a decade of multiparty elections, neither the rich nor the powerful seem to take the slightest interest in the well-being of the electorate, even though a dim regard for public support may have inspired authorities to escalate the conflict in Chechnya and throttle critics in the press ...”

“... case.’ Except that a horrible basket case is exactly what Royal Mail has become, according to Richard Hooper, whose successive reports on the organisation – the first appeared in 2008 – have given the government its case for selling the company off. The legislation to enable the sale is going through Parliament now. ‘Without serious ...”

“... Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal ...”

“... philosophers, have pored over such matters in order to understand the world; and one or two may have come round to his conclusion, that the point is to change it. This seems an unlikely role in which to cast Roy Jenkins. But when the urbane biographer of Asquith undertook the 1979 Dimbleby Lecture (now reprinted in The Rebirth of Britain) he was clearly ...”

“... work. The contract – agreed without any competitive tendering – was signed in early May but, unusually, backdated to 17 March, two days before Lee Cain’s Zoom call. Paul Stephenson’s public relations firm, Hanbury Strategy, was given a series of contracts. Campaigners launched a legal action, accusing the Cabinet Office of apparent bias and ...”

“... politics of ‘lawful constitutions’ and ‘natural right’ – from the murderous madness of Richard III, you might say, to the enlightened benevolence of Nathan the Wise. Whatever might come of it in France, the French Revolution had ‘revealed in human nature … a capacity for improvement that no politician could have conjured up’ and, according to ...”

“... individualism to an imperial appetite and the project of continental expansion. Turner’s insight may sound like common sense: once the last frontier has closed, Americans will have to teach themselves how to live, and at just that point the New World will cease to be new. But we have never come to that point, says Fisher. He is pretty sure we never will. And ...”

“... and, in all probability, the political editor Adam Raphael. If he hasn’t sacked them yet, it may only be because he finds himself strapped in by the conditions attached to the sale of the paper. But Rowland is a very determined character – as is shown by his relentless fight with the House of Fraser over the future of Harrods. He is the kind of man ...”

“... He was mad, but he was not just mad. There is more to know. This is the historical lacuna that Richard Noll exploits in his disturbing and often illuminating book. Noll comes to the quest for the historical Jung – his phrase – with a broad background in Jungianism, psychiatry and shamanism and his training stands him in good stead much of the time. He ...”

“... here: you can’t simply say that inequality means we are all suffering together. Instead, it may mean that the poor are doing so badly that the rich aren’t interested in looking at the wider picture. They are focused on making sure they don’t wind up poor. This is why the difference between ‘almost everyone’ and ‘everyone on average’ matters ...”

“... and the early years of the 20th century there were several related attempts, by writers such as Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas, to identify ‘England’ with ‘the countryside’ (largely for an urban readership), while the interwar decades tended to throw up more quizzical searches for ‘the real England’, assumed to have been submerged by the ...”

“... rigour; but it lies discreetly behind a non-academic joyfulness. The French used to celebrate Richard Cobb as le grand Cobb; and perhaps it isn’t too early to hail his successor as le grand Robb. Of Robb’s 19 chapters, three are set in the late 18th century, six in the 19th, eight in the 20th and two in the 21st. They feature many of the best-known ...”

“... 2011, the MSC broke the cardinal rule of journalism and gave the Met details of Sun sources who may have been public officials. For years News International had blocked inquiries into hacking at the News of the World; now it was volunteering evidence about corruption at the Sun, which hadn’t even been under investigation. Among the first officials to be ...”

“... were didactic – ‘one of the things they were about was the indisposability of plastic.’ Richard Deacon, who is with Cragg ‘the most expensive, the most written about, the best patronised ... of the new British sculptural establishment’, makes startling hybrids: ‘To produce one of his small sculptures an old brass navigational aid must have ...”

“... and reach a more balanced view about how central it has been within its traditions. This may well entail re-assessing Gaitskell’s attack on Clause 4 after the Party’s defeat in 1959. Morgan dismisses this initiative as ‘a victory for abstract logic over common sense’ on the ground that ‘Labour did not intend, and never had intended, to ...”