“... patients who could sue but who do not, than the numbers who actually do take legal action.’ He may well be right: he is certainly right to suggest that most people in this situation want not revenge or money but a truthful account of what has gone wrong and what is being done to put it right. Litigation is often the resort of the terminally frustrated. But ...”

“... before men had a word for it. How indeed could they have a word for it until it had happened? David Underdown, one of the five big names contributing to this festschrift, has a characteristically wise survey of ‘Community and Class’ in the English Revolution. Disregarding Hexter’s prohibitions, he concludes: ‘The Marxist model of local political ...”

“... which also happens to be the period after which deportation is automatic, which means they may just as well have been turned around at the port of entry. The Cambridge report records the story of one victim of trafficking who was sentenced to two consecutive periods of 12 months for using a false document with intent and making a false statement for ...”

“... under any other act, then the coroner must hold an inquest as soon as it is practicable. A jury may or may not be summoned, but either way the inquest must decide, first, who the deceased was; and second, how, when and where they came by their death. In the past, inquests used to engage with far wider questions, often ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... But even Melville might have blenched at Browning’s final exordium: So, British Public, who may like me yet, (Marry and amen!) learn one lesson hence Of many which whatever lives should teach: This lesson, that our human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind. So that’s it. The British Public might ...”

“... the 21st century’s new challenges’, from terrorism to climate change to cyber warfare. Legvold may be right that the rhetoric coming from either side could have material effects. The notion of a ‘cold war’ is a kind of geopolitical speech act: if enough people in power decide they are in one, it will materialise. But there are decisive differences ...”

“... their annual returns if this expenditure exceeds £2000 … Introduce a power whereby a Minister may … [in the] public sector … restrict facility time [union activity during working hours] … Reform the role of the certification officer … [by giving them] investigatory and enforcement powers; the power to impose financial penalties … [and] require ...”

“... prototypical dead youth who had sacrificed his life for the Nation. (His funeral was organised by David.) Then, after the fall of Robespierre, there was what Ben-Amos calls Rousseau’s more ‘integrative’ funeral, whose pastoral imagery soothed the crowds as the body made its way from its quiet grave on an island in a country lake to the national shrine ...”

“... a difficult one. The war hadn’t been going well since the landings in the Pas de Calais in May 1946 were thrown back with terrible losses – a failure that had much to do with the amount of treasure and materiel that had been diverted to Britain’s nuclear weapons programme. The Americans remained preoccupied in the Pacific, still wary of the ...”

“... other tragedies. There is no tragedy at all in Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day – though this may be because the show was cancelled for its political subversiveness before Fassbinder could get round to crushing his characters’ hopes and dreams.Unusually for a director from a middle-class background making films about working men, there is little ...”

“... by one of the characters in Kingsley Amis’s latest novel, Difficulties with girls. It may not have been the same remark, of course: but since Amis was Larkin’s close friend, and Larkin a great letter-writer, and since the words on the page served suddenly to bring back a long-past occasion, it seems possible that a series of sentences has ...”

“... man’s Providentially-assisted recovery of pre-lapsarian wisdom, has led us to expect). It may therefore be preferable to regard the idea as a final prophetic warning to modern man, a plea for the preservation of religious authority against the corrosive effects of scepticism. Lilla has written a substantial and scholarly book, even if he ...”

“... for something in particular, and moreover to be disappointed at not finding it.Of course, you may object, this story is too elaborate. Too ‘conspiratorial’. If the rozzers want to do an old-fashioned fit-up, they can simply produce the letter from one of their own pockets, hand it to the suspect so as to get some fingerprints, and then ...”

“... out. She calls Jigsaw, which has to do with her own early life, ‘a biographical novel’; and it may not be a coincidence that the book’s most sympathetic reviewers have been those who seem already to know her life story. ‘Truth,’ one of the characters remarks, ‘is such a feeble excuse for so many things.’ Bedford, always inclined to look down her ...”