“... largely deemed a draw) were it not for a failing that had little to do with technology. As Andrew Gordon explained in The Rules of the Game (1996), his brilliant dissection of the Royal Navy that fought at Jutland, the service had become progressively encrusted over the previous century with a rigid mindset exacerbated by an ever more elaborate system of ...”

“... lists were drawn up of such notorious Communists or Communist sympathisers as Brian Walden, David Owen, Robert Mellish, John Stonehouse, Roy Hattersley and Reg Prentice; and even a bogus pamphlet on ‘revolutionary strategy’ for the installation of socialism in Britain was contrived for off-the-record briefing of American journalists, the joint ...”

“... mortality levels. At some point in their lives Adam Smith, John Miller, William Robertson and David Hume began to question the theology in which they had been reared: Camic is convinced that ‘their revolution was a union of circumstances’ – in other words, that it was their rearing which freed them for it. That Adam Ferguson did less original ...”

“... rogue exception’ and his crime ‘an exceptionally unhappy event’ in the paper’s history. David Cameron then satisfied himself that Myler’s predecessor, Andy Coulson (who had resigned following Goodman’s conviction), was fit to manage his relations with the press. The appointment of Coulson, made in May 2007 on the recommendation of the shadow ...”

“... been made clear, still less where the money will come from to pay for the £7 billion in tax cuts David Cameron airily promised in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference last October. When such pledges are discussed in the media, it is usually in terms of whether they are funded or unfunded – whether the numbers ‘add up’. Osborne’s Autumn ...”

“... tradition of Tory thinking about public transport. It was in the same genre as the rumour – even David McKie has been unable to turn up a precise source – that Margaret Thatcher once remarked that anyone who rode a bus after reaching the age of 26 was a failure. It also reminded me of a story Ken Livingstone liked to recite when he was leader of the ...”

“... 30 April-1 May. To Essential Music in Great Chapel Street to record The Uncommon Reader, which Gordon House, former head of drama at BBC Radio, has adapted and is producing. What other readers are like I’ve no idea, but I always feel I am a sound editor’s nightmare, breaking off in the middle of a sentence to start again, redoing paragraphs when ...”

“... have doubted the value of the ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent so light-heartedly renewed by Gordon Brown and to which, Downing Street tells us, he remains committed. But given what the deterrent means to the country’s political class – the international standing they imagine it gives them – it is unlikely that a Cameron government would do away ...”

“... so on. Then he returns with elliptical reports from which the tribe’s younger storytellers, from David Foster Wallace on, set about extracting a style and a tone attuned to new ways of feeling and not feeling. One constant throughout these risk-filled spirit voyages has been DeLillo’s superbly take-it-or-leave-it posture towards the laity. ‘The writer ...”

“... of the Bastille, the taking of the Winter Palace, the Peasants’ Revolt, Captain Swing, the Gordon Riots and Watts tend to be reconstructed as a series of memorable tableaux, punctuating the flow of events and creating major divisions between what went before and what came after. They give structure to human time. Indeed, they and allied markers are ...”

“... writing has a lyrical passion in argument that I found irresistible,’ says no less a judge than David Malouf. ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ Malouf being no fool, I am reluctant to suggest that the reason he couldn’t put the book down was that it is so full of hot air it kept springing back up again. Reluctant, but compelled. Lyrically passionate writing ...”

“... a Westminster cliché, echoed privately by the Shadow Chancellor and one-time Mandelson intimate, Gordon Brown, that Mandelson is Labour’s real deputy leader. His grip on strategy and policy direction, as well as campaigning and presentation, is increasingly tight. When Mandelson mutters that he is unhappy, say, with Labour plans to abolish compulsory ...”

“... God’s strength made perfect in human weakness: the Bible story of Gideon, or of the shepherd boy David. For it was the religious anxieties and unanswered questions of this insignificant monk, not the great powers of the world against which elaborate diplomatic, legal and military defences had been erected, which brought ruin to the Pope, to the Church as it ...”

“... Diaries. The first is Campbell’s decision to suppress material that would have damaged Gordon Brown. Since the inside story of Blair’s premiership is the story of his relationship with Brown, this is a huge hole in the book; though such mentions of Brown as there are (Blair ‘said that it was interesting that GB had been more co-operative ...”

“... half within four years. They haven’t spelled out how they are going to do it, and until recently Gordon Brown was talking about ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’ – which, given what he must know about what the figures mean, is jaw-droppingly cynical. The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to ...”