“... of local government: the new initiatives to revive the North are strictly London-led, as was George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse project. The Supreme Court (never to be forgiven for its refutation of Johnson’s prorogation) is to be starved of oxygen by limiting the right to judicial review – ‘a bit of constitutional plumbing’, as the attorney ...”

“... strongly critical of some of his appointments, especially of ‘internationalists’ such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker and Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger was one of the few figures in the administration to show concern about white extremism. Reagan only made matters worse by allying himself with Jewish neoconservatives, who his far-right critics ...”

“... In a series of blog posts fired off within hours of the first demonstrations, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan proclaimed Twitter ‘the critical tool for organising the resistance in Iran’. In a piece of electronic agitprop he declared that ‘the revolution will be twittered.’ The technophiles in Washington didn’t disagree. One of the most vocal ...”

“... au Magistrat’, though without saying where or when. I am grateful to the sharp eyes of Andrew Wilson, who spotted the Mountjoy reference by chance (or by alphabetical serendipity: he was researching a family ancestor called Merryweather) and kindly shared it with me. The story, such as it can be reconstructed, is contained in two sets of court ...”

“... 1814, into a wealthy and well-connected family which traced its name back to a Scottish soldier, George Learmont, who ended up in Russia in the early 17th century. His mother died when he was three and he was raised by his maternal grandmother. She had conventional expectations, and her grandson was pushed through the respectable portals of privilege: a ...”

“... economic elite. The old ruling class was not just selfish but ‘foolish, frail and inept’. Even Andrew Mellon, the formidable secretary of the treasury who had dominated three administrations, was now exposed as an ‘ageing nincompoop’. Wall Street winked out of American culture for two generations. Fraser takes an inventory of the great fall. In ...”

“... instability’ that threatened access to resources and paved the way for Communist penetration. George Kennan, the theorist of containment, argued that it was ‘better to have a strong regime in power’ in Latin America ‘than a liberal government if it is indulgent’ to Communists. And Washington helped make sure things stayed that way, funding and ...”

“... There were messages of endorsement from Lady Antonia Fraser and the feisty historian Andrew Roberts; the Economist saluted the new edition as ‘impeccably postmodern’; 5000 free copies were distributed to schools, a Trojan horse for early indoctrination in traditional values that would be reinforced by emphatic TV explainers vamping through ...”

“... and tying paper flowers to the wire fencing around the Rose and the Globe, had a familiar whiff.Andrew Gurr and John Orrell’s Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe concerns a project conceived well before the recent discoveries. But its primary aim – to present the case for a ‘reconstruction’ of the Globe Theatre in Southwark near the site of the ...”

“... political and cultural discourse, which made it imperative for such apostles of public opinion as Andrew Marr to treat Ferguson with reverence. But his apotheosis came in the United States, where – backed by the prestige of Oxbridge and, more important, a successful television series – he became a wise Greek counsellor to many aspiring Romans. He did not ...”

“... novels were selling strongly and being urgently discussed: one was lyrical and would-be Proustian (Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance); the other was bilious and aspired to satire (Larry Kramer’s Faggots). I disliked them both, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that gay literary culture had room for two such opposite productions, could ...”

“... happen,’ even though there has been an increase in the number of wars. Later in the same volume Andrew Linklater maintained that ‘there is no doubt that globalisation and fragmentation have reduced the modern state’s willingness and capacity to wage the kinds of war which typified the last century.’ America, Britain and some cronies may have lapsed ...”

“... scholarly tasks of editing Milton and of compiling a student anthology of critical essays about Andrew Marvell, experiences that awoke him to the full horror of academic Lit Crit: ‘researching these two books made me resolve never to write such stuff myself, and to deride it whenever I came across it.’ Much of the introduction to the Marvell collection ...”

“... kept leaving, he affected not to care. In a broadcast interview with the New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin (whom Musk called ‘Jonathan’), watched more than four million times on YouTube, he said that advertising boycotts were tantamount to ‘blackmail’, and that brands which fretted about the salutariness of the site or his own feed should go ...”

“... in themselves, and with potentially terrible consequences of exposure and professional ruin. Sir George Mowbray Bt, chairman of Berkshire County Council, spent a drunken hour in Piccadilly Circus underground station, where he ‘smiled, nodded and looked’ at other men. In court he explained he was happily married with three children and at home ‘drank ...”