“... be the shock troops of his army. It was clear then, and later, that many were neither particularly nice nor particularly democratic. Benn is aware of this. He writes of the Militants in his own constituency: ‘They moved endless resolutions. Their arguments are sensible and they make perfectly good radical points but they go on interminably in their ...”

“... for thirty pages reluctant to let his book go, even to hand it over to his fictional alter ego, David Kobra. He has a sub-Kunderesque divagation on his ‘philosophy of ecstasy’ before going on to the ownership of property – descriptions of remote and magnificent real estate are my hot tip for fiction-writers in this last decade of the ...”

“... the one person Genghiz had feared and respected.) Kitbuga may have been inspired to try playing David at Goliath’s Spring: at any rate he attacked the Sultan (who inspired his own soldiers with the cry of ‘O Islam’) without the usual Mongol craft and precaution, and lost his army and his life. Had Hulagu been able to return he would certainly have ...”

“... in flouting convention, which was anyway in the process of change: but she was fundamentally a nice girl, respectful of her parents’ wishes, repelled by promiscuity, and chaste almost to the point of frigidity. Perpetually falling ‘in and out of love’, which did not require physical requital in her case, she later insisted to Arthur Balfour that ‘I ...”

“... of In Place of Fear. The story accords all too well with the widespread impression of Kinnock as a nice lightweight ill-equipped for the job into which his engaging personality and a large slice of luck have suddenly precipitated him. Experience alone can dispel that impression. In the meantime his eagerness to claim the Bevanite succession raises interesting ...”

“... him more rather than less suitable for public display. For Lord Redcliffe-Maud is, indubitably, a nice man, he would not hurt a fly or, if he did, it would be clear to everybody that it was for the best of motives. Lest I should be thought to be claiming to draw a portrait from the live model, instead of merely giving an informed opinion, such as Lord ...”

“... of US debt. The deal on offer to the Republicans was described by the conservative commentator David Brooks as ‘the deal of the century’, offering ‘trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases’: A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth ...”

“... Leishman rendered many of the odes into graceful Alcaics and Asclepiads; Christopher Middleton and David Constantine, in contrast, resorted to looser paraphrases. Hamburger takes the more challenging route – with considerable success. The opening lines of ‘Bread and Wine’ catch the rhythm and flow of Hölderlin’s distichs: Round us the town is at ...”

“... He is right about that. They would also notice some strange inclusions: for example, essays on David Frost, Kenneth Clark, Tom Wolfe and Germaine Greer – Sixties figures to a man. Booker’s earlier book, The Neophiliacs, he tells us, was ‘a detailed, analytical account of the astonishing changes which had come over Britain in the Fifties and ...”

“... the bombed areas as quickly as possible. Perpetuation of the genes does not require children to be nice to their parents, but it is saddening to learn that the tendency was to abandon them and for husbands to leave their wives – although not for mothers to abandon their children. The report on Hiroshima and Nagasaki states that the seriousness of atomic ...”

“... he’d had Nicholas Spice in mind when he invented Nicholas Spare, an odious music critic whom the nice characters in An Equal Music loathe. I decided to avoid the subject of Nicholas Spare. Instead we talked about poetry, and then about Vikram Seth and then about Haydn. How remarkable that Haydn had been a choirboy at the funeral of Vivaldi and yet had ...”

“... the sons of his friends and former colleagues are swimming with the New Labour tide: Edward and David Miliband, sons of his old friend Ralph; Charles Clarke, son of Benn’s former Permanent Secretary, and so on. Some of the most poignant moments come when the Millbank machine tries to whip in its oldest member, reducing him in May 1999 to writing ...”

“... the Birmingham Trojan Horse hoax.)In response to the Tower Hamlets case, the then prime minister, David Cameron, asked his ‘anti-corruption champion’, Eric Pickles, to look into electoral fraud. The subsequent report acknowledged its debt to Mawrey – ‘the judgment of Richard Mawrey QC was one of the reference points for this review,’ Pickles ...”

“... place of worship is a lane on the outskirts of Leeds between Arthington and Harewood. It’s a nice location and of some historic interest, as in the 16th century the land belonged to 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 ...”

“... a suit. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said. He was amused and suspicious at the same time, a nice combination I thought, and there were few signs of the mad unprofessionalism to come. He said the thing that worried him was how quickly the book had to be written. It would be hard to establish a structure that would work. He went on to say that he might be ...”