“... Better still to let the clock wind down to 29 March in the hope that no agreement in Parliament means that no deal can be struck. Meanwhile, for Remainers, secure in the knowledge that there is no parliamentary majority for a no-deal exit, the temptation is always there to push for a second referendum in the hope of overturning the original result. Why ...”

“... are bound to build. The Conservative Party, in theory, remains fully committed to the Union. David Cameron repeatedly and pointedly talks about having come into politics to serve ‘our country’, and by that he doesn’t mean England – he means the UK. Yet this election was meant to be the occasion when the Tories ...”

“... had much logic, inasmuch as entrepreneurial (or, for that matter, professional) skills are by no means a matter of upbringing or heredity. What the tradition in effect provided was a convenient myth to justify and to sustain paternal striving: for many a concern, the building-up or maintaining of something to pass on to one’s sons – or, in default of ...”

“... Evan Luard’s Socialism Without the State, John Horam’s calls for ‘market socialism’ and David Owen’s evocation of the co-operative, decentralist element in the British socialist tradition exemplified a widespread mood, with which the old Right of the Labour Party had no more in common than had the Left. It was not as new a mood as he seems to ...”

“... of its sweeping symmetries and exquisite mathematical structures. Brutish because the principal means of acquiring information about the subatomic realm is revving up tiny bits of matter to extraordinary energies and then smashing them together. Imagine trying to discern the hidden inner workings of a pocketwatch – carefully gauged springs and gears, all ...”

“... On 24 July, in a speech to the Rwandan parliament, David Cameron said that the old ideological divisions concerning aid and trade – aid is ‘wasteful’, trade is ‘unfair’ – needed to be abandoned in favour of a commitment to what works. He talked about the importance of transparency and accountability at both governmental and non-governmental levels to ensure that resources were used efficiently and money reached its targets ...”

“... a number of questions unanswered. By using the available manuals, Essick is able to discuss what means were possible, and by a brilliant analysis of the existing plates he is able to prove beyond doubt that Blake etched his plates extremely shallowly. In so doing, Blake could exert a personal control over the inking, and thus achieve a spontaneity quite ...”

“... of a widening economic gap between an enlarging proletariat and a shrinking bourgeoisie – means that we can no longer hope to find a majority class with a compelling material interest in overthrowing that system. We can therefore no longer believe in the historical inevitability of socialism, but must instead regard it as a moral ideal which, if it is ...”

“... any party, including the Labour Party of Tony Blair and the Conservative Party of Blair’s heir, David Cameron. Glasman has no fundamental problem with Cameron’s notion of the Big Society, which he takes very seriously. He absolutely is not one of those who think it’s just a fluffy cover story for an ideological programme of radical Tory cuts (which is ...”

“... power, some moments now look like straws in the wind. In late November 2010 the English FA sent David Cameron, Prince William and David Beckham to Fifa headquarters in Zurich to lobby on its behalf before the vote for the right to host the 2018 World Cup. Two old Etonians and an alumnus of Chingford County High ...”

“... options presented to them. But Trump’s case is also very different. The length of the US contest means there is plenty of time for the old rules to reassert themselves. And when that happens, Trump has the option of running as an independent, which is what a disruptor would do (though the likely consequence is that he would help usher Hillary into the White ...”

“... William Fiennes has a deep-seated sense of home and what it means to be distant from it. Birth-house, parents, migrant birds: these fuse in his passage on swifts, for example, which ‘come back each year, in the last week of May’ to his old home somewhere in the south country – a fact which interested me, because I have recorded their arrival since the 1950s in Aberdeen on 11 May and in Cumbria on 6 May ...”

“... is evidently not well. Curiosity once meant the scrupulous exercise of care and attention; it now means their overuse, or inappropriate application. The short sequence reveals Arnold’s determination to restore its good name. But Jackie, too, will soon go ballistic. Identifying in the CCTV footage the man she holds responsible for the deaths of her husband ...”

“... leading characters, Rube (Geraldine Sherman), Sylvie (Carol White) and Eileen (Vickery Turner), by means of a pan down from a sign for Clapham Junction station which fits them exactly to a place and time. The play’s loose, episodic structure allows for improvisation. What Loach was to call a ‘go-in-and-grab-it type of filmmaking’ follows the actors ...”

“... and delivered without notes. What made it appear a triumph was the speech given the next day by David Davis, Cameron’s main rival for the Tory Party leadership and the man long considered the favourite to succeed Michael Howard. Davis flopped. He spoke woodenly from behind a lectern without any of Cameron’s natural ease, looking and sounding like ...”