“... diphtheria) caused planetary cooling. The initial hypothesis, proposed by the palaeoclimatogist William Ruddiman, held that the severe depopulation of the Americas – a 90 per cent collapse within a century – allowed for the growth of immense amounts of carbon-devouring vegetation. Further research into Antarctic sea ice, where air from as long ago as ...”

“... vestry, a town hall, is remembered and recorded. The work of the architects (Caesar Augustus Long, William Hunt, A.G. Cross) responsible for its development and redevelopment is acknowledged. More recent exploitations of a building denied any proper function since the 1980s are ignored. No notices commemorate ‘Whirlygig’ club nights when New Age ravers ...”

“... care ‘reform’.When I want to recall those Leckford Road days, I can turn up a letter that William Jefferson Clinton wrote, on 3 December 1969, to a certain Colonel Holmes of the University of Arkansas Reserve Officers Training Corps. Clinton wanted to clarify his attitude to the military draft:Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked for two years ...”

“... has been temporarily usurped or infringed by a new male cult whose founding fathers were Cromwell, William of Orange and Edward Carson, and whose godhead is incarnate in a rex or caesar in a palace in London.‘The fury of Irish Republicanism is associated with a religion like this,’ he had said a year or two earlier, referring to the Mother Earth paganism ...”

“... the Caribbean, the colonists discovered that Kock had spent the first instalment of federal cash on leg-irons and stocks rather than houses – he was promptly thrown off the island. Lincoln sent a ship to evacuate the ragged survivors in February 1864. Republicans flirted with the idea of deportation, but the first principle of colonisation was that ...”

“... turn, a form of mass denial that makes acceptance of the health service’s requirement for more cash difficult. Chronic illnesses are common among the non-elderly, of course – diabetes, asthma, depression, eating disorders – but when we’re younger, we tend to think of healthcare in linear terms: either the emergency route or, less urgently, you have ...”

“... the ‘Big Three’ bookmaking firms that dominated the market (the other two were Ladbrokes and William Hill). I was a cashier, which meant I took in the bets, made a record of them (using a fairly rudimentary photocopying system) and paid out to the lucky winners. Behind me and a couple of other cashiers sat the manager, a kindly, depressive middle-aged ...”

“... while at the same time feuding with the left over wealth taxes and stimulus cheques. Similarly, William Nordhaus, the Nobel Prize-winning climate economist, has spent much of his career since the 1970s policing the boundary between climate alarmism and what his work suggests is reasonable policy: his models acknowledge the climate crisis, but characterise ...”

“... they had each accepted £1000 in return for tabling Parliamentary written questions. The same ‘cash for questions’ controversy also later accounted for two senior ministers, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, who had to leave their posts at the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Trade respectively. The paradox behind this extraordinary succession of ...”

“... Tupelo. His older twin, Jesse Garon, was stillborn. (There was ugly gossip later that the doctor, William Robert Hunt, might have had a drink; that he might have saved Jesse if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the surprise appearance of a second child. But the Presleys were satisfied with his work and Dr Hunt received his standard $15 payment from the ...”

“... the kingdom of England itself, but a large proportion testified to pious Anglo-Norman energy after William I’s conquest of England in 1066, resulting in the formation of a diverse range of communities whose distinctive ‘rules’ for communal life were an implied criticism of the monasteries that had gone before. Well-functioning monasteries constantly do ...”

“... To His Sacred Majesty), on the new baby heir to James II (Britannia Rediviva); though never on William and Mary. Theological disputation, first Anglican in complexion (Religio Laici), then Roman Catholic (The Hind and the Panther). Historical chronicle (Annus Mirabilis). Translation: from Homer, Juvenal, Persius, Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer and others; and of ...”

“... house, and a wee-hours screening of our host in an unimpressive video, dressed up as Johnny Cash (‘I’m a sucker for despair, for faltering’). ‘A conceptual fuck’ is the way Chris describes her experience of the evening over breakfast the next morning; she then goes on obsessing and obsessing. And Sylvère indulges it, maybe because it’s a ...”

“... at the time. Heath was left to devise his own plans with his own trusted associates, crucially Sir William Armstrong, the head of the home Civil Service. Vic Feather of the TUC called Armstrong ‘deputy Prime Minister’, and this expressed a truth not so much about Armstrong’s impropriety in becoming ‘political’ as about Heath’s increasing detachment ...”