“... Canada.Seward also negotiated a treaty with Denmark to acquire the islands of St Thomas and St John, two of its possessions in the Caribbean. A State Department report of 1868, produced for Seward by the former Mississippi senator and ardent expansionist Robert J. Walker, suggested ‘the propriety of obtaining from the same power Greenland, and probably ...”

“... Alistair MacLeod is a Canadian of Scottish descent, and, like John McGahern who has written a foreword to his collected stories, an astute observer of a very specific local setting – Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; of its landscape and industry, its closed communities, quotidian tragedies and domestic disappointments ...”

“... handled the countdown with more aggression and a lot more self-importance. The selector, John Hart, on their arrival in the changing room: ‘It’s going to be a long wait, boys. Time to concentrate.’ Then the coach Brian Lochore, voice breaking with emotion: ‘You’re a good team but you’re not yet a great team. If you win today you can say ...”

“... but probably also to distance himself from an episode of family humiliation: in Joseph Knight v. John Wedderburn, an enslaved man had successfully sued his owner, James Wedderburn’s brother, winning his freedom and forming a precedent that made life difficult for slave owners in Scotland. Andrew Colvile wrote to Bell’s claiming that his father had ...”

“... Latin and published, it becomes clear how strange the poet’s Christianity was. The poet is John Milton, and the work is De Doctrina Christiana.De Doctrina Christiana matters because it mattered to Milton. You can ignore it and still enjoy his poetry, but if you become seriously interested in Milton your interest will sooner or later extend to his ...”

“... There was never any question of the three defendants (the journalists, Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell, and the former signals corporal, John Berry) meditating passing any information to ‘the enemy’ – except (an important qualification) insofar as the British Security Services have always regarded the British ...”

“... the Holy Grail for the Knights Not Round the Table – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Redwood et al – and they have devoted their adult lives to it. But they have more in mind than this. They hope also to undo the constitutional and administrative reforms of the Blair years. What they want to achieve is a simplification of democracy. The ...”

“... the drawing room – and sat me by a different fireplace and an old but different desk – was John Macfie, a tall and whiskery gentleman who lives there with his family. He poured me a whisky before sitting down in a red armchair beside the darkened windows. ‘At the front, in Louis’s bedroom, you get the punctuation of street noise,’ he ...”

“... in which the King’s Secretary issued a warrant authorising two messengers to enter the home of John Entick and search for seditious papers. There was neither common law nor statutory authority for this action, which Entick successfully challenged in the courts, recovering damages from the hapless messengers (said to be ‘as much responsible as their ...”

“... From an elevated and distant position the queen looks down approvingly, her loyal ghillie John Brown, leader of the queen’s pony, at her side. John Grant, the head keeper at Balmoral, is on his knees in shirtsleeves, one hand on the stag’s antlers, while the other reaches for his sgian-dubh, with which he will ...”

“... as both shadow leader of the house and shadow Welsh secretary. Corbyn and his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, have also been abandoned by several of the high-profile economists they signed up as advisers in 2015, including Thomas Piketty and David Blanchflower (who tweeted ‘he has no economic policies’). Corbyn’s former policy chief, Neale ...”

“... at all like Lydia Davis. It’s no surprise, then, that the invitation to deliver the Windham-Campbell Lecture on the topic of ‘Why I Write’ at Yale in the autumn of 2024 should have resulted in a short book with a frankly diversionary title. Or that the book itself should prove so hard to describe, let alone characterise.The first few pages of Into ...”

“... have taken a very different line, and in their chapter on the general law of medical negligence John Finch and Robert Cowley (respectively an academic and a practising lawyer) commend them for doing so. The Canadian Supreme Court has pointed out that what is a reasonable risk to a doctor is not always so to the patient, and that to allow medical judgment ...”

“... except Donald Trump … would grant access to the editor of the National Enquirer.’The Blair/Campbell secular benediction ‘the People’s Princess’ was surprisingly more than a slogan: Diana pre-empted the media, the conduit to the people. She got over being described as a Pinner hairdresser, just as Kate Middleton had to put up with some crass digs ...”

“... for example – were quickly pushed aside. Instead, architects and planners (including Jock Campbell, the plantation-owner-turned-socialist who led the corporation for 15 years) accepted that new town inhabitants would drive cars, commute, live in breadwinner/housewife domestic units, and have material and aesthetic aspirations. Milton Keynes was, in ...”