“... while the confessions said it had been left outside. Then there was an awkward doctor from Winson Green who kept insisting that the six defendants had sustained serious injuries before they were admitted to prison. He was sharply put down by Mr Justice Bridge. The injuries, the judge concluded, had probably been ‘self-inflicted’. ‘It is quite ...”

“... West who have no visceral understanding of the risks posed by infectious illness. In addition, as David Runciman has pointed out, politicians and government don’t get credit for the disasters and failures they prevent. The combination of these two factors – generational obliviousness and the bias away from the good governance of prevention – goes a long ...”

“... An unforgettable occasion. A motor eased alongside Tony at the corner of Blythe Street, Bethnal Green. Ron and Reg were inside, keeping company with a known associate, Dickie Morgan. Reg was nicely cased in a blue three-piece by Woods of Kingsland Road. Dickie matched him. (The Twins were very influential that way. All the faces were expected to dress to a ...”

“... lack of comprehension and placatory ‘wonderfuls’ irritate his brother to madness. ‘How green is this shade,’ Nag witters. ‘Banana is always green, what is there to wonder about like a baby?’ The conflict – which never comes to a head because Nagaraj avoids confrontation – between competence and ...”

“... that draw on the Bible. Joseph Heller’s God Knows sets itself up as the memoir of the ageing David – ‘warrior king, the sweet psalmist of Israel’ – and plays off its contemporary idiom against an ancient story for cheap laughs. David reminisces without ever losing a sense of his audience; with a wink to the ...”

“... be more empowering than to sit looking at an immaculate rectangle of water, a three-dimensional David Hockney which will never be disturbed by a thrashing alien presence? Neighbours lacking this obscene quantum of liquidity might well complain about the noise, the dust, the inconvenience and the damage to their foundations. It doesn’t signify. And ...”

“... on both sides of the Atlantic. Dressed in a carefully chosen series of gowns – by Deirdre David’s report, the wardrobe consisted of black or red velvet for the tragedies, white or pastel satin for the comedies, and dark green or blue brocade for the history plays – and with no props other than a large reading ...”

“... Diebenkorn remembered helping him hang a show of his work in 1947. But like Elmer Bischoff and David Park, with whom he made the turn to figurative painting a few years later, Diebenkorn was asking questions that abstract expressionism couldn’t always answer, even though, as the early works in the show at the Royal Academy (until 7 June) suggest, he was ...”

“... his voice as he shouts? A police car, lights on, is parked behind him. Beyond the car the black-green of a band of trees is broken by a few bright spots; they could be streetlights or house lights half-obscured by foliage. It must be night time. Are they crime-scene floodlights that shine across the lake, on the man, grass, rocks and car? Although the ...”

“... personal recollections, letters, photographs, newspaper reports and other contemporary documents. David Pryce-Jones has gone to immense trouble to sustain this pretence, and he is clearly a connoisseur of the times and the culture he has set out to portray. The end effect has a certain virtuosity, but it is also irritatingly mannered and artificial. The book ...”

“... Ican list​ a hundred things David Foster Wallace should have written before he wrote a book about tax accountants. One, and the most obvious, is a novel about Irish dancers on tour with a Michael Flatley figure whose influence grows more sinister over time. Pounds of verbal oil will be poured into his perm; his bulge will almost rupture his trousers ...”

“... liquid bottle (‘cleans, no added promises’) on a fire. Words rear up and loom enormous – David Cameron, for example, may find this with his plan for ‘thrifty government’ – and fizz and collapse and make a nasty smell. It is, I take it, obvious that one of the many things no one particularly needs at the moment is a book that tells you how to ...”

“... Baghdad, and that the Iraqi army could not get them out. Earlier that month Barack Obama had told David Remnick of the New Yorker that, compared to al-Qaida, IS was a junior varsity basketball team playing out of its league; a few months later its fighters emerged from the desert to defeat six Iraqi army divisions and capture Mosul. Wary of making the same ...”

“... at Bafta. These sorry occasions have always been best forgotten; now their memory must be kept green against the possible arrival of the men in white coats. 19 January. Watch a video of Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), the first time, I think, that I have watched it all the way through since I saw it as a child at a cinema in ...”

“... spinster. He conjured up, without benefit of a brass section, life on a Midsomer Murders village green: it was a social prophylactic to curb the excesses of the time, sexual and fiscal, and to herald a return to family values. Neither of these conservative philosophers, Major or Tebbit, appreciated the inflammatory effect that bicycles have on the ...”