“... of the mujahideen seriously,’ the speaker continues. ‘Do not listen to the liars Bush and Blair who say that al-Qaida is finished. We are not spokespersons for al-Qaida but we pray in the same direction.’ I notice, at the back of the hall, two men in suits who are not journalists, though one of them holds a notebook. They listen attentively. An ...”

“... invariably demeaned by its occupant. Sixty years ago this month, the then Tory Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, chose to announce a new Public Order Bill in the course of an offensive and thoroughly partisan speech at Cleckheaton Town Hall which just happened to be delivered in the same week in which Labour’s annual conference was taking place. The effect of ...”

“... Joseph Ellis should now venture an answer to this question, having already produced biographies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as a book about the 1790s, Founding Brothers, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Like many Americans, George Washington took arms against Britain in 1775 resignedly. He was 43, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War and a ...”

“... like Kenyatta; he preached national unity (as they all did). One who hoped much from him was John Githongo, the hero of Wrong’s fascinating, richly researched and important new book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. Githongo believed Kibaki when he proclaimed an end to corruption, and became his right-hand man in the task of ...”

“... 1946, only to be expelled by a reactionary faculty – he had dared to prefer Cézanne to Augustus John. Forced into national service for 18 slack months, he spent most of the time reading, Joyce above all, and Ulysses became the subject of a first suite of etchings; old media attracted him as much as new. ‘Hamilton was fascinated by the skill, the ...”

“... a radical bookshop and publisher in North London, Johnson met the Trinidadian poet and activist John La Rose, who became his mentor. He was also introduced to Caribbean intellectuals including Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey and Sam Selvon.With Selvon’s encouragement, Johnson abandoned his attempts to write poetry in standard English and began experimenting ...”

“... agenda tied to its tail, one which was destructive of social solidarities, while the right-wing John Redwood objected that it came veined with social-democratic notions which discouraged governments like Britain’s from making up their minds to be independent nation states in charge of their own economy and their own politics. The different styles of ...”

“... covering the case of a teenage boy who had been beaten up by a policeman in Thurso, which is near John o’Groats. There was the most fearful hullabaloo based on the belief that this sort of thing could only happen in the wilderness of the Far North. The press demanded that this errant policeman be brought to justice. There was a similar furore a year or two ...”

“... boasted about their powerful contacts in the Tory Party and the Government. Greer even mentioned John Major as ‘a close friend’. The programme-makers arranged further such meetings, one in a Spanish castle, to which Greer was asked to invite his contacts. Greer’s network of helpful politicians was about to be exposed when Central Television and its new ...”

“... easy way to complete the forms. The same applies to statistics from Egyptian asylums supplied by John Warnock, the head of the Lunacy Department there from 1895 to 1923. Warnock admitted to a ‘total ignorance of Arabic’, which must have made sensitive diagnosis difficult. He also diagnosed Egyptian nationalism as ‘an infectious mental disorder’ and ...”

“... of political science in That Noble Science of Politics (1983), cowritten with his late colleagues John Burrow and Donald Winch, which rejected the notion that a unidirectional, single-subject narrative was an adequate way of recounting a discipline’s history. The authors instead immersed themselves in unresolved contradictions: between deductive procedures ...”

“... of the Union, O’Connell practised as a barrister, the most theatrical of the professions. Tony Blair was also a barrister, his wife is the barrister daughter of an actor, and Blair’s headmaster at Fettes remembered him as a consummate performer. Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, was said to have an ‘almost ...”

“... with Thatcher, from 1981 to 1986, as leader of the Greater London Council, and with Blair, from 2000, as mayor – brought to a head a debate about how the system should be run and paid for which had begun in the 1850s, before the first shovelful of earth was dug for the Metropolitan. Throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras, thanks to the ...”

“... Labour about to return to power, but still anxious to establish its mainstream credentials, Tony Blair chose to highlight his acceptance of the anti-union consensus in an article for the Times: ‘Let me state the position clearly, so that no one is in any doubt. [Under Labour] the essential elements of the trade union legislation of the 1980s will remain ...”

“... affected to some degree, and looked for an explanation. ‘She called out to the country,’ Elton John sang at the funeral. But may it not have been the English Rose’s country which, in the aftermath of loss, ceased being able to call out in a traditional way? If so, a call long responded to – not really ‘down the ages’ but for quite a long ...”