“... Spells supposed to protect the magician from elves can be found in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman spell books, and fairies in folklore had always been associated with magic: it was widely believed they could confer magic gifts on humans, such as the power of healing. But spells that empowered the magician to summon fairies and force them to do his ...”

“... or duller than we have been led to suppose, or had wasted his time in Washington. If you look up Peter Wright’s Spycatcher, though, you will find a record of some affable chinwags with Berlin, tending to confirm Auden and MacNeice’s award, in Letters from Iceland, of a ‘dish of milk’ to the feline Isaiah. And some other living cloak-and-gown experts ...”

“... of the World Trade Center, a new frontier opening up. As the then US transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, warned the Senate Appropriations Committee in May 2002, ‘We’ve got every salesman – 20,000 of them, I think – approaching us about how they’ve got some machine that will take care of everything we do, including not only detecting ...”

“... an interest in London history. He recently attended, so he tells me, a public conversation between Peter Ackroyd and a journalist ‘who looked like Hugh Grant’. Stephen Gill accompanies me: he photographed the site so often, before the occupation, that he can’t pass up this opportunity. The spill-zone in front of the station has a triumphal arch with an ...”

“... an especially sardonic folk voice relates the way ‘the Kinraddie lands’ came into being. A ‘Norman childe’ killed a gryphon for the king, ‘and William … gave to him all the wide parish as his demesne and grant to … keep down all beasts and coarse and wayward folk, him and the issue of his body for ever after.’ Thus feudalism, or, as Williams ...”

“... and Marco Tardelli’s primal scream (Spain 1982); Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ leap over Peter Shilton (Mexico 1986); Frank Rijkaard’s fleck of gob caught mid-parabola towards Rudi Völler’s perm, and Gazza’s tears, and Maradona’s tears (Italy 1990); Roberto Baggio’s penalty soaring over the bar (USA 1994); Zinedine Zidane walking past the ...”

“... versions of events. She and her husband adored the old two-room private flat they rented in St Peter’s Avenue, and fought a long, bitter and unsuccessful battle with the council to prevent it and the neighbouring homes being knocked down. ‘It was a lovely house,’ she said. ‘These days they would have done them up because when you go down Columbia ...”

“... woman to man’. It encountered fierce criticism. The chief rabbi wrote to the health secretary, Norman Fowler: ‘Say plainly: Aids is the consequence of marital infidelity, premarital adventures, sexual deviation and social irresponsibility.’ Fowler later remembered that Margaret Thatcher’s ‘initial instinct was that this was not a big problem, and ...”