“... At another point, Campbell notes that ‘he had clearly been chatting to his maker again.’ That may be the key to Blair’s metamorphosis from a politician who prided himself on his sensitivity to public opinion, to one who prided himself on his ability to ignore it. The full extent of the disaster in Iraq is not present in these pages, but it looms over ...”

“... of Anglo-British governance remains that all official information is secret but that officialdom may choose to bestow access to parts of it on people who are not otherwise entitled to know it. For the last few centuries this has principally meant the press and the media, and the state has always been aware that such access can be sold in return for political ...”

“... had manifested.Behind me sat Jeannie, a Eucharistic mystic, and her Cajun ex-seminarian husband, David. (At the reception afterwards, in his lovely honk: ‘Best decision I ever made, to leave!’) The women’s heads were covered. Time had not passed. My younger sister, Mary, walked down the aisle in a sort of black sausage casing, as the wedding ...”

“... in all political action and about the ‘diabolical powers’ intrinsic to politics, which may warp a leader beyond recognition. He is sharp too on the subject of vanity, a cardinal sin in a politician, and its dependent disorders, lack of responsibility and lack of objectivity. Weber’s is a prescription for heroes; I wonder if any politician could ...”

“... experiencing old age and bodily decline (‘Diabetes is now affecting both eyes, though what this may symbolise I can’t say’). And for a lot of the time it is a poem preoccupied with poetry: there are numerous one-line aphoristic definitions of ‘poem’ throughout, both weighty (‘Poem as cradle of the unbiddable name’) and flighty (‘Poem as equity ...”

“... said. To have in your life a problem play, to have it be a problem play because of your life.As David Mitchell notes in his introduction to this reissue of Medusa’s Ankles, the selected stories are as deep and broad as the three decades they cover, though the ones from Sugar and Other Stories (1987) are the most indispensable. Each is different from the ...”

“... palace coup in Oman in 1970 and – last but not least – three abortive plots, farmed out to David Stirling and sundry other mercenaries under the initially benevolent eye of Western intelligence services, to overthrow the Gaddafi regime between 1971 and 1973 in an episode known as the Hilton Assignment. At the same time, the story of Libya in 2011 gives ...”

“... the Middle Ages, when Grimsby first began sending members to Parliament, it has sent men. After May, it’s as close to a racing certainty as you can get that Grimsby’s MP will be a woman.To​ talk about politics and abdication in Grimsby is, for most people, to assume you’re talking about Austin Mitchell, the 80-year-old Labour MP who will step down ...”

“... in jobs. In 2010 France embarked on a spectacular eviction programme – Roma again – and David Cameron pledged to bring down annual net migration to the UK from hundreds to ‘tens of thousands’, a fantastic notion unless Britain left the European Union and refused entry to ever growing numbers of British returnees – 80,000 plus in 2008 ...”

“... responsible for Julian’s fondness for country squirely pursuits. There’s a good description by David Garnett of Julian beagling at Cambridge: he was ‘far bigger, noisier and more raggedly dressed than any of his companions … bursting with happy excitement … Late in the afternoon Julian turned up with his ragged clothes torn to tatters, which flapped ...”

“... shale production and with rapid advances in fuel-cell technology in the offing, oil revenues may never again cover state expenditure. The kingdom has no choice but to diversify its economy. Young Saudis, who constitute the majority, have been particularly enthusiastic about Mohammad’s transformation of an ultra-conservative sheikhdom into a ...”

“... displaying Rhodesian military regalia. For the wider American conservative movement, white power may have been a useful dog off the leash when it came to unofficially fighting far-flung communist insurgencies, but it has also been a liability. Faced with the reality of a multiracial America, the mainstream Republican Party has mostly been wary of making ...”

“... where the lobotomy on Betsy was carried out but identifies the doctor responsible as Marcel David. This authorises her, with an exaggeration most will forgive, to link his name with Freeman’s as two mobile men immobilising women who made the mistake of not knowing their place.In the book’s most startling passage Yon breaks off her researches and ...”

“... photograph, while Abstract Expressionism, or whatever its equivalent in ongoing American poetry may be, continues its fissiparous course. Is Lowell the victim of what he himself called ‘the bravado of perpetual revolution, breakthrough as the stereotype, with nothing preserved’? That, in a sense, would be a fit end for a king, remaining embalmed in the ...”

“... as Philip Martin puts it. In J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, the dodgy English professor David Lurie’s seduction of his student is bound up with his admiration for Byron’s poetry, Lara in particular.It’s easy to forget, in this context, that Byron was the same poet who could picture possible incest and a poisoning in The Bride of Abydos ...”