“... political figures of the age, though someone who barely gets a walk-on part in this volume. Martin Luther King told his supporters, who were fearful of what a Texan like Johnson would do in the White House: ‘LBJ is a man of great ego and great power. He is a pragmatist and a man of pragmatic compassion. It may just be that he’s going to go where ...”

“... an ex-Cluniac monastery that was among the properties (they included Kirkstall Abbey) granted to Thomas Cranmer on the death of Henry VIII. It wasn’t actually included in the royal will but was part of the general share-out that occurred then to fulfil the wishes supposedly expressed by Henry VIII on his deathbed. Not far away is Harewood House (where I do ...”

“... arrange a meeting for me with anyone in the building. On a video call I asked a senior executive, Thomas Wildsmith, if older townspeople were ever invited to see what they get up to. ‘It’s not easy just to open the doors to everyone,’ he said. ‘We’ve done that in the past. We hope to do it again in the future. I’ve been in and around Blyth for ...”

“... to his body as a walking lab, pills slushing against potions in his insides. Ten years earlier, Martin Amis had reviewed one of the first British documentaries about Aids for the Observer. Aids, he wrote, ‘is a visitation that makes you believe in the Devil’: With Aids … it seems to be promiscuity itself that is the cause. After a few hundred ...”

“... It’s an old tactic and it is still in play around the Grenfell disaster. As soon as Martin Moore-Bick, the chair of the public inquiry, announced that he would be seeking answers rather than taking dictation from those with passionate feelings, he was dismissed as a ‘posh white man’. It was reported that the community felt he had ‘the ...”