“... Hotel, he baulks at drawing any conclusions from this sinister conjunction of Black Country powers. Robinson, like the other essayists, is an old-fashioned, sacerdotal critic, and it is unsettling to read in a book published by the Open University a critic who speaks of ‘a witness to the truth, not of God, but of our unwillingness for God’: reading ...”

“... forward. The willingness of the Lib Dems to accept an apparent fait accompli, like the NHS Bill or Michael Gove’s education ‘revolution’ or even the extent of the spending cuts, was the result not simply of parliamentary weakness or feeble leadership, but of the ambiguities of their own policy and rhetoric. For the last thirty years or so, the Lib Dems ...”

“... both the attempt to regulate collective bargaining with incomes policy and to curb trade-union powers by law had been abandoned. The problems inherited by the Heath Government were considerably worse than those which had faced Labour in 1964. Sir Denis is reserved about his own role in those years but, if we read between the lines, it is plain that he was ...”

“... president plays no role. In Georgia, for example, concerns about the gubernatorial abuse of pardon powers in the 1940s led to the creation of an independent board to handle the process.If there was a conspiracy to keep Trump from running, criminal charges would be a cumbersome method to choose. No provision in the US constitution prevented Debs from running in ...”

“... no doubt about the importance of Churchill himself. Despite ill health and some decline in his powers and energy, despite the fact that some of his ideas and interests were decidedly out of date, Churchill was still highly effective as Prime Minister, and he led what was probably the best government this country has had since the war. Less constrained by ...”

“... and even fear. Only two years previously Trench had been ‘house tutor’ (with extensive powers to beat boys) and his passion for bare bums was the subject of much gossip. Older boys with broken voices and hairs on their legs had nothing to worry about. Treble-voiced, smooth-legged classics students should try to keep out of his way. Most of the ...”

“... of his prolific (hetero)sexual adventures: he had, says a more up-to-date historian than Rowse, Michael MacDonald, ‘a mesmerising personality and the sexual appetite of a goat’, and studded his diary with his ‘haleking’, as he put it, with an A to Z of his women, and with planning or avoiding such occasions as his consultation of the stars ...”

“... at Oxford: ‘His body of work . . . amounts to a class action lawsuit against all manner of powers that be, from inept social-service agencies in the UK to oppressive Central American regimes.’ His early television productions – ten were broadcast in the BBC’s Wednesday Play slot between 1965 and 1969 – had a crusading urgency that reflected the ...”

“... charge was a matter for the prosecuting authorities. Not long afterwards the attorney general, Sir Michael Havers, told the Commons more candidly: ‘One must realise that the 600-year-old statute is couched in such archaic language that it would be difficult to prove all the necessary ingredients of the crime and for a modern jury to come to grips with the ...”

“... born in Market Square, slap bang in the middle of Lichfield, in September 1709, the elder son of Michael Johnson and his wife, Sarah, rather old and very proud parents. They had, Johnson recalled, ‘not much happiness from each other’, and immediately deposited their ambitions in him. Michael, the son of a labourer, had ...”

“... a private investigator called Glenn Mulcaire with violations of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. After pleading guilty, both men received short prison sentences in January 2007. That might easily have been the end of the matter. A number of high-ranking officers in the Met had personal and financial links with News International ...”

“... and all that. I reached my limit when I got to an episode of Trashfuture and heard him discussing Michael Young’s original conception of ‘meritocracy’, something he explores at length in the book. He had to pause while his hosts pointed out that Michael Young is (drum roll) the father of Toby Young, free-speech ...”

“... was boredom. Most people were interesting first time round. ‘Wednesday 9 July 1941: Lunched with Michael Foot, whom I liked very much. He hated and hates Chamberlain even more than I. His views, though a trifle too leftist, are sound.’ But they did not turn out to be permanently palatable. ‘Friday 3 October 1952: After dinner we watched a political ...”

“... of Harold Shipman; announced new restrictions on demonstrations outside Parliament; extended the powers of Police Community Service officers to tackle beggars, and angrily denied that this meant people would be being arrested for dropping crisp packets; said that failed asylum seekers would be put to compulsory unpaid work in return for the right to claim ...”

“... Zidi in François Ozon’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks; sometimes female, such as Gina McKee in Michael Winterbottom’s Wonderland, Christina Ricci in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and Chloë Sevigny in Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco; and occasionally male and heterosexual but out of sorts, like Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Mike Figgis’s The Loss of ...”