“... very little land until the 1890s, when county councils began to establish farms that would give young people an agricultural training at a time of rural depopulation. The First World War raised concerns about the security of Britain’s food supply and about what the troops who survived would do for a living when they were demobbed. Local authorities bought ...”

“... writing and filmmaking (in 1938 he had won an Oscar for The Private Life of the Gannets). In 1951 David Attenborough’s first TV production was narrated by Huxley.An early fascination with Africa (and a lifelong love of travel) slowly developed into one of the two dominating preoccupations of his final decades, the preservation of African wildlife, where his ...”

“... his own. Not everyone in the business swooned in admiration when they first encountered Wal-Mart. David Glass, who years later succeeded Walton as chairman of the company, travelled down to Harrison, Arkansas, to see the opening of one of the new shops: It was the worst retail store I had ever seen. Sam had brought a couple of trucks of watermelons in and ...”

“... to see if the reason for the leg pain could be emboli’. If this didn’t endear her ‘to the young men and women who made up the house staff’ so be it. Didion is a spellbinding writer: she isn’t necessarily likeable, or un-scary. ‘In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was ...”

“... in World War Two, the ‘turning’ of German agents. That was when MI5 took in all those bright young dons, like my recruiter in the 1960s, to help the ex-colonial introverts out. Thereafter, MI5’s achievement was patchy: catching some spies, but missing a lot, including the Cambridge Five, and smearing several innocents. It was also hugely damaged in the ...”

“... soon afterwards, complaining that ‘news management’ had become ‘news invention’. Even the young Queen Elizabeth was moved to remark to her press secretary: ‘I think the basic dishonesty of the whole thing was a trouble.’ Now, 30 years on, Lance Price, himself a former BBC reporter who then worked as a media adviser to Tony Blair, has brought the ...”

“... over Occupied Europe on B-25 Mitchell bombers, and came home like thousands of other literate young Americans secretly hoping to dazzle the world with a novel about his war. But after his early success in placing stories, Heller put down his pen. Looked at with a cold eye, the early stories did not strike him as making quite the impact he had in mind. It ...”

“... envisaged both by Article 53 of the convention and by Section 11 of the Human Rights Act itself. David Cameron advocates replacement of the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights and responsibilities entrenched against repeal. Gordon Brown advocates a new constitutional document ‘in parallel’, as the recent green paper puts it, with a bill of rights and ...”

“... of undergraduates then (gleaned from movies like A Yank at Oxford with Robert Taylor) was of a young man in dressing-gown and slippers, a towel round his neck en route for the distant baths. I didn’t run to a dressing-gown and slippers either: ‘Nobody’ll mind if you just wear your raincoat,’ my mother reassuringly said. I wasn’t reassured but ...”

“... the daily humiliation not just of being occupied but of being the occupier: Next, a husky young man, a teenager, pushed up to Lieutenant Ganci. He gestured to a rubbish pile that filled a vacant lot next to the shops and houses. In an overly loud voice he asked Ganci: ‘Why don’t you Americans clean up the garbage?’ Sighing, Ganci ...”

“... he replies, ‘modestly’: ‘I served the Emperor of Ethiopia.’ And there is Milos Hrma, the young, timid railway signalman in Hrabal’s most famous novel, Closely Observed Trains. When he discovers that the stationmaster may become an Inspector of State Railways, he is excited, and reverently asks: ‘An inspector, like that … that’s the same rank ...”

“... entirely fitting for a piece written within the context of marital negotiations, especially by a young and attention-seeking poet. Dunbar is the first writer in Scots who can legitimately be called a ‘Court poet’. The Scottish kings had no great tradition of encouraging literary patronage, and indeed for much of Dunbar’s career at James IV’s Court ...”

“... this from first-hand testimony from defectors, including Saddam’s own son-in-law.’ At Camp David on 7 September, Tony Blair said proof of a genuine nuclear threat had come in ‘the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites’. Saddam had killed his ...”

“... by asking whether it was appropriate for the signatories of the letter to teach impressionable young adults. The claim that the left has shut down ‘free speech’ on immigration and race has been widely aired, and some will see the Conway Hall row as yet more evidence supporting that claim. Others might see two media-savvy academics and a cranky ...”

“... memories of 6 January were at any risk of fading, they were rekindled on 28 October, when David DePape attacked Paul Pelosi, husband of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer after breaking into their home in San Francisco (she subsequently announced she was standing down as Speaker). DePape shook Pelosi awake with cries of ‘Where’s ...”