“... to restore the forward march of British labour which began to falter thirty years ago.’ This may not seem a very startling conclusion, even for 1978: the thesis that Labour was in electoral decline had already been well documented by Ivor Crewe and his colleagues at the University of Essex, while others of us, sympathetic to the radical right wing of the ...”

“... cut to Irishness – shamrocks, Guinness, lots of green things – while a little more knowledge may attach to him the legend that he is responsible for Ireland’s lack of snakes, having ordered them all to leave. The picture becomes more complicated for those who have discovered that he wasn’t Irish at all but from somewhere in the island of ...”

“... on a menu at the exhibition about the Partisan coffee house at Four Corners Gallery (until 27 May) that provided the appropriate madeleine. Looking at the exhibits, above all the splendidly atmospheric photographs by Roger Mayne, made me realise that the coffee house was by no means the unalloyed disaster I – as someone deeply involved in the project ...”

“... between the first and the third objectives ‘has given rise to significant problems’. It may have but I cannot see why it should, nor that there is any inherent contradiction between the aim of bringing justice to individuals and that of a more general improvement in the position of racial minorities. There may of ...”

“... distinction between ancestors and hotoke. This trend has now reached the point where all deceased may achieve the status of hotoke, so that the household (whose ritual life is focused on the family altar), not only consists of its present, living members, but also incorporates all those who have given life to it in the past, or who will do so in the ...”

“... notes historical, philological and geographical, and appendices. Yet it is also possible that she may have read too much into her text. She would certainly not be the first specialist to do so; Alice in Wonderland comes to mind, to say nothing of much graver works. In any event, if The Travels of Mendes Pinto was a satire, it was a satire that escaped the ...”

“... to read him.’ For some fellow inhabitants of privileged and artistic society the pleasure may not be unmixed. Sir John Pope-Hennessy testifies that Roger was a ‘much kinder, more liberal, more positive person that the diary suggests’. That such virtues were valued by Hinks, even if rarely displayed in his writings, ...”

“... the moves; pure destruction. By reliably offering such pleasures Hiaasen induces dependence. One may miss the sour bite of bleaker comedy, found in the best crime stories of a more realistic kind, but for entertainment few can match him. Hiaasen’s patch is Florida. Its Everglades and Keys; barracuda, turkey vultures, alligators and panthers do more than ...”

“... to them what sounds like the Apostles’ Creed for criminal underlings: ‘I am the boss. You may never refuse an order and you may never quit. If you decide to run off, I will hunt you down and kill you, no matter how much I’ve grown to like you.’ Later in the movie Vince Vaughn – as Frog, the organisation’s ...”

“... has led to thousands of jury trials being delayed by months, even years. People arrested recently may have to wait until the end of next year or even 2023 to have their day in court. Meanwhile, the significant cuts in legal aid introduced in 2012 have driven many defence lawyers out of business. And if all this leads to miscarriages of justice, well, the ...”

“... operations. In her most substantial contribution to last year’s referendum campaign, Theresa May gave security as the best reason for remaining in the EU. If we left, she said, we would still share intelligence about terrorism and crime with our European allies, and they would do the same with us. But that does not mean we would be as safe as if we ...”

“... signs of torture. As a foreign resident in Egypt, depending on the length of your stay, you may or may not have dealings with the police. The experience is never reassuring. A visit to the local police station to get a stamp on a document for a driver’s licence quickly goes awry. A plainclothes officer ...”

“... that after full independence there won’t be any Scottish MPs in Westminster. (Actually, there may well be quite a few, but they’ll be representing constituencies in the future UK, or fUK. Just to be clear, from now on when I refer to Scottish MPs, I mean MPs representing Scottish constituencies.) The problematic period is the ten months between the ...”

“... some suspenseful moments on the way back from Niort when it seems as if the contents of the trunk may be revealed. All is well, though. I mean, all is ill in just the way we want it. So far. Then it turns out there is no body. The pool, drained on a trumped-up pretext, is empty. A promising corpse found in the Seine is not that of Meurisse. His suit ...”

“... for free. Online education is clearly going to be a huge deal for universities; for one thing, it may put quite a few of them out of business. It probably won’t be MOOCs that do that, though. I get the feeling that inside the American university system, their free and open nature makes them seem less of a threat – a threat in business terms – than other ...”