“... just finished Ashley Kahn’s absorbing history of a date, ‘A Love Supreme’: The Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album.* Trane was a nice sheets-of-sound antidote to the ormolu, love-nests and scheming courtiers of the Ancien Régime. Yet despite having a workable assortment of Mulligans and Bakers and Konitzes, I was also feeling vaguely ...”

“... significant force to his left. In American politics, a respectful Communist Party or an awkward John L. Lewis were marginalia. In Brazil, on the other hand, the PT is a central presence on the national stage. It is often described – even by its enemies – as the only real political party, with a genuine mass membership in the country. There is an element ...”

“... Royal Dutch-Shell, BP-Amoco, TotalFinaElf and Chevron-Texaco), elephantine oil corporations with wells, pipelines, refineries and subsidiaries in almost every country on earth, and collective sales revenues of more than $500 billion (almost twice the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa), have scaled the walls of the White House. In a bullish five years in the 1990s as ...”

“... Northampton, Truro, Nottingham, Redhill, Gillingham, Epsom, Dartford, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and the Isle of Wight warned they were no longer able to provide comprehensive care. The recommended safe limit for the number of beds that should be occupied by patients in any one hospital at any one time is 85 per cent. Across England as a ...”

“... before it fell, France wanted to stop him from getting it.The object was to disrupt or destroy oil wells, pumping stations and refineries, and to block supply routes to Germany by rail or along the Danube. A plan was drawn up to blow up the cliffs at the Iron Gates, where the Danube narrows and cuts through the Carpathians in a series of turbulent ...”

“... where I boxed rather than fenced, because he had been coached when in the Army by Bombardier Billy Wells, the sometime British heavyweight champion.My upbringing, in short, was a preparation for two alternative roles: devout Jew and British Army officer. This seems to have been foreseen from the time of my birth, for they gave me a couple of good Jewish ...”

“... can’t carry much at my age. A little pint bottle is quite heavy.’ He introduced me to John Russell, an 88-year-old ex-engineer in a residential care home. ‘I saw one old lady trying to stagger off with six bottles,’ Russell said. ‘They were carried for her by a complete stranger.’ He introduced me to Joan Bufton, whose daughter needs ...”

“... part self-justification, which could stand as the heart’s cry of New Labour – the agony that wells up in the soul of an ambitious, sensitive socialist who suffers because he can’t live like the hedge fund people, those people who are so much more charming than one has been led to expect. ‘A bit of high living had definitely crept into my ...”

“... I see his loving gaze falling on the objects in it: a conch shell on a side table, a painting by John Piper (a wedding gift). Home is never a neutral place, it is a very specific context, an animated expression of the presence it contains. Why can’t it be loved?‘You can’t love an inanimate object.’ I don’t know where he got the sentence from. My ...”