“... most like to have sex with if the opportunity arose, but then she started cheering for Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, who was telling the hall that Joe Biden ‘gave us Trans Visibility Day instead of Easter Sunday’. Then Greene closed her theatre of hate and headed for the exit in her ...”

“... rooms); the Battle of Santiago (hosts Chile against Italy in 1962, characterised by the BBC’s David Coleman as ‘the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football in the history of the game’); die Wasserschlacht (the water battle) of 1974, when West Germany, the hosts, beat Poland on a waterlogged pitch that nullified the ...”

“... on the dominance of the big seven private housebuilding companies – in descending order of size, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt Homes, Persimmon, Bellway, Redrow, Bovis and Crest Nicholson – who between them have almost 40 per cent of the market in new homes. But the most striking thing in the document is a chart displaying the history of Britain, in housebuilding ...”

“... farmers who sold up and took what capital they could with them. ‘From the famine onwards,’ David Fitzpatrick writes, ‘male and female emigrants were quite evenly balanced. Boys and girls alike swarmed out of every parish, every social stratum, and almost every household, systematically thinning out the fabric of Irish society.’About a million ...”

“... this would have taken most of the day, but brought up in the brisker school of music video Ben Taylor, who looks not long out of school himself, polishes off the whole sequence in a couple of hours. 10 May. Filling a pot with water to take a huge bunch of peonies L. has sent for my birthday I slip on the wet flags and fall down three or four of the stone ...”

“... The recording comes from a film called Broadway Melody of 1938 in which Garland stars with Robert Taylor and Eleanor Powell. It was her first feature-length film for MGM. She had performed the song earlier that year at Gable’s on-set birthday celebrations: he was the studio’s biggest star. Garland made a surprise appearance at the party, posing as a ...”

“... the fatal tendency of the Conservative governments to which Britain has been subjected since 2010. David Cameron’s declaration in January 2013 that, if the Conservatives won the next election, they would offer a referendum on membership of the EU – which wasn’t a significant concern, never mind a priority, for British voters – is a fine ...”

“... Holiday, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Their music embodied the promise of another country, one that was true to its professed ideals. Its very existence seemed miraculous. A vernacular music, created by the descendants of slaves, had evolved into the country’s greatest art form. ‘It was a ...”

“... where was he going to live? – in the context of a housing shortage so dire that Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, has reported instances of prisoners being issued with tents and sleeping bags on release. After getting out, Grimshaw lived in a supervised hostel for eight weeks, then moved into the two-bedroom house where I met ...”

“... and deep distrust of law enforcement never far from the surface. It wasn’t the repartee of David Milch’s cod-Shakespearean TV series Deadwood, but it was impressive. These people were unafraid to state the obvious, or to test established principles against their own instincts. It seemed to me that the traditional regard for civic responsibility was ...”

“... waving cushions and towels, and some were leaning out. It happened that one of the firefighters, David Badillo, knew two of the uncles, Carlos and Manfred Ruiz, from the sports centre – they had all worked there as lifeguards – and Melanie gave Badillo her keys to their flat, 176 on the 20th floor. (They still hadn’t heard from Jessica.) Badillo went ...”