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“... open debate. The GB News episode shows the flimsiness of this bit of conservative self-fashioning. Andrew Neil, the chairman of GB News, warned the companies that had paused their advertising: ‘This boycott business can play both ways … we can muster millions of supporters … Not a good idea to be on the wrong end of them.’ Boycotting businesses and ...”

“... a limited work, cartoonish, narrow, raucous, too often mistaking noise for vividness. On the back, Andrew O’Hagan rightly characterises its effect as ‘like the Osbournes invited the Simpsons round for a root beer, and Don DeLillo dropped by to help them write a new song for Eminem,’ without telling us why that particular party would be enjoyable or even ...”

“... Rwanda’s second biggest bilateral donor, suspended aid payments – until Kagame assured Andrew Mitchell, then the secretary of state for international development, that he had no knowledge of any such threat. Mitchell was ‘inclined to believe him’. A report by Human Rights Watch three years later documented ten cases of Rwandan exiles ...”

“... in Hong Kong. In Man and Boy Harry’s misfortune led him to reassess his relationship with his young son and his parents and to fall in love with a woman who had a young daughter of her own. In One for My Baby Alfie’s misfortune leads him to wish he had children, to reassess his relationship with his parents, and to ...”

“... distracted. Frail elderly people often have a less robust systemic response to infection than the young and fit, but even so, Mr Wedderburn was flushed with a temperature of 38°C, and was breathing much too quickly. As I listened to his lungs with my stethoscope his fingers picked at the bedcovers, and his feet knocked against his cot-bars. When I took a ...”

“... a mesmerist, who claims he can help her, and seems to do so with the assistance of a medium, a young woman who turns out to be … her lost sister! The confusing difference in their appearance – Catherine’s extremely large feet – is accounted for by her tightrope-walking career. When the Baron discovers Gertie is about to inherit a large fortune he ...”

“... as his writing. When I reached the area near Columbia University, I remembered that as a student young Kerouac had looked out of his Livingston Hall dormitory straight at a frieze on the side of the (then) new Columbia library. It said ‘Goethe ... Voltaire ... Shakespeare ... Molière ... Dante ...’ And sure enough, just as you’d feared, Jean-Louis ...”

“... the corner of Howe Street and Heriot Row, where you are bound to feel the press of Stevenson’s young mind, for these are his ‘sleepy quarters’, his world of oil-lamps and dark coasts.He lived at 17 Heriot Row, five floors of grey Georgian elegance facing the Queen Street Gardens, the dell of A Child’s Garden of Verses. Stevenson would dedicate that ...”

“... switched on the power in the 1950s. Novelists such as George Lamming, Samuel Selvon, John Hearne, Andrew Salkey and V.S. Naipaul were among the first voices from the outposts of Empire to talk back. Not for them ‘clapping his hands and stamping his feet’ in order to communicate, like Conrad’s fireman (‘and he had filed teeth, too’). This black man ...”

“... intelligence and breadth of interest were recognised. He was a character people wished to record: Andrew Wilton’s beautifully-shaped documentary biography shows how often he amused or startled people into felicitous description. A young businessman records a meeting: I have fortunately met with a ...”

“... work. I arrived at the Glasgow production office when the film was more or less ready. There was a young woman there who was red-eyed and depleted from weeks of work on the programme; she’d clearly knocked her pan in trying to get it into some sort of decent shape, under the usual pressures. As I looked at her scurrying and typing and phoning and thinking, a ...”

“... a crowd to riot, and was said to be behind the suffragette burning of Leuchars Station. Netta held young Hugh in her arms. His mother climbed on a truck. She had words for the crowd, and was sure of them. But heaven knows she was shaking. ‘We know the laws of God well enough about here,’ she said, ‘and we know that justice will be ours, and is harmful ...”

“... had some sewing machines before the man who operated them disappeared. Some of the boys are as young as ten and there is no education and too little water. But ‘the political boys’, as the guards call them, are keen to point out the legality of their activities from their point of view. The Afghan government, for reasons nobody understands, aims to ...”

“... a series of more than 30 audio tapes over recordings of children’s music and Peking opera (his young grandson and the child’s parents shared the house with Zhao and his wife). He passed the tapes in separate batches to trusted friends, and hid a back-up set among his grandson’s toys. By this time, his 1997 attempt at rehabilitation had failed. His ...”

“... of the History side – which collected the self-appointed intelligentsia of the school – and Andrew Wordsworth, a poet and friend of poets. Bowle introduced us to Burckhardt and Tocqueville and his own gurus, Gerald Heard and Arnold Toynbee. Andrew wore thick blue tweeds and velvet or woollen ties with enormous ...”