“... figure in literary Dublin. For example, in 1980, when Neil Jordan, at that time the most promising young writer in the country, published his first novel, it seemed natural that Stuart would launch the book. In the early 1980s Penguin reissued Black List, Section H. For me and many others who visited the Stuarts in these years, there was a special aura around ...”

“... Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was created by Alparslan Türkes, a colonel who as a young officer during the Second World War had been an ardent pro-Nazi, and was one of the key movers of the coup in 1960. Adopting fascist methods, it swiftly built up paramilitary squads – the Grey Wolves – far stronger than anything the left could ...”

“... first meetings Lowell returned to the image of water. ‘But the fact is we were swimming in our young age, with the water coming down on us, and we were gulping.’ In Bishop’s world there was always water. The house in Great Village in Nova Scotia where she spent some of her childhood still stands in a strange coastal flatness, as though it could be ...”

“... stream. It might be nice to think that the War Office picked these locations to provide the young recruits with fresh memories of the peaceful and bucolic country they’d be fighting for, but the nearby artillery ranges in both places were the more likely draw.At Aldbourne the troops learned that in January they would set sail for France, where ...”

“... 100 Agents of Change’ in the waste debate. Standing at number 28 – one above new entrant David Miliband, the environment secretary – is a man called Andy Moore, who is head of the Community Recycling Network. The first time I met him, in the bar at Paddington Station, he seemed weary but refreshingly non-morose when it came to talking about ...”

“... they will almost certainly cross that boundary, but until it is crossed, it is possible for the young and middle-aged to regard the old as if oldness is their essential nature. It isn’t a lack of compassion; after all, for the not-elderly, the elderly are their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Partly it’s a problem of scale. Your mother ...”

“... falls across them was felt already in the Enlightenment. The first major writer on the subject, David Hume, introduced it with the caveat that ‘the vulgar are apt to carry all national characters to extremes.’ But that was not a reason to deny their existence. ‘Men of sense condemn these undistinguishing judgments; though, at the same time, they allow ...”

“... as the valet’s perspective on the future of the continent. Thomas Meaney GreeceTwo years ago, David Cameron saw himself out of office, respecting the result of the referendum he had unwisely called. For three years now, Alexis Tsipras has clung to power in Athens by disrespecting the results of his own referendum. The Eurozone’s one-time guerrilla ...”

“... the sound again. It was someone talking upstairs. I climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and saw a young woman dressed in black leggings, an orange hi-viz jacket a couple of sizes too big and a safety helmet. She was talking to someone on her mobile. She finished the call and told me all the managers who might be able to speak to me were away on ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and so on. Of her rash on Sunday the SI investigator said to us: ‘This is about a rash in a young woman who was profoundly unwell, had sepsis that was unexplained, high fever, low blood pressure, racing heart – in context, those things by themselves are enough for admission to a high dependency facility. The rash on top of that … just goes to ...”

“... Sir John Sunderland, Roger Carr, Rick Braddock, Ellen Marram, Guy Elliott, Rosemary Thorne, David Thompson, Sanjiv Ahuja, Wolfgang Berndt, Lord Patten and Raymond Viault. Only Berndt replied (Chris Patten’s assistant told me he was in ‘rural Asia’ without email, then, when the deadline was extended, too ill to respond). Berndt told me he ...”

“... asked by the Foreign Office to become the United Kingdom’s special representative on Cyprus. Sir David – now Lord – Hannay, who began his career in Iran and Afghanistan, was Britain’s foremost European diplomat, with some thirty years of involvement in EU affairs behind him. His summons came from Jeremy Greenstock, soon to become famous for his ...”