“... by a social worker from the local authority Mental Health Team. Clunis told the social worker, David Purse, that he was on medication because of drug abuse, had no psychiatric problems and wanted help only with housing. He was taken at his word: Purse told the Inquiry that he ‘could only go on the information he was given’, and that he thought Clunis ...”

“... form of an equation. 16 December. As I’m correcting the proofs of this diary the news comes of David Blunkett’s resignation. It’s hard not to welcome his departure, while at the same time deploring the manner of it; anyone hounded by newspapers has my sympathy, even though in Blunkett’s case the leaders of the pack were the very papers he had ...”

“... and recounting success. In Sweden Stern got to talk – ‘again’ – with Olof Palme; in Iran David Rockefeller arranged for him to meet the shah; in Egypt he met Boutros Boutros-Ghali. And in India, Italy, Poland, China and other places he met scores of ambassadors and important intellectuals. He confesses that he seeks out the company and approval of ...”

“... It was reading Robert Lowell that brought me to poetry at the age of 19, in 1976. I had borrowed a friend’s omnibus edition of Life Studies and For the Union Dead, and something in me said: ‘This is it!’ I don’t remember the poem I first had that response to, but most likely it was in Part IV of Life Studies, ‘Dunbarton’ or ‘For Sale’, or perhaps ‘Waking in the Blue ...”

“... the way banking has changed, become more intense, more time-consuming and more overtly greedy. David Kynaston, author of a magisterial four-volume history of the City, completed in 2001, observes at the start of the fourth volume that ‘the modern City is in many ways a cruel, heartless place, and its occupants work such cripplingly long hours that ...”

“... looms, nature documentaries have become big business. The last six years have seen a succession of David Attenborough hits: Blue Planet II, Dynasties and Dynasties II, The Green Planet and Frozen Planet II on the BBC; and on Netflix, Our Planet, A Life on Our Planet and Planet Earth II. Attenborough’s most recent series, Wild Isles, was watched by more than ...”

“... it back to the studio bosses. When Garland became pregnant by her first husband, a musician called David Rose, the studio encouraged her to have an abortion: a baby would have ruined her image as a girlish ingénue.Garland felt the oppression of being an eternal teenager so keenly that she didn’t immediately welcome Meet Me in St Louis when discussions about ...”

“... of government: McGeorge Bundy, who left the National Security Council to head the Ford Foundation; David Rockefeller, who founded the Trilateral Commission, President Carter’s think tank of choice; and William Burden, Eisenhower’s ambassador to Belgium and a financier whose friendship ensured Brzezinski’s instant admission to the Harbour Club on Mount ...”

“... system safer, the answer again is that we don’t really know. As the financial historian David Marsh observed, the only way you can properly test a firewall is by having a fire. I think the ring-fence is an opportunity missed. That goes for a lot of the small complicated rules designed to make banks and the financial system safer. Bankers complain ...”

“... Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, died in 1952, David Ben-Gurion is reported to have said: ‘There is only one man whom we should ask to become the president of the State of Israel. He is the greatest Jew on Earth. Maybe the greatest human being on Earth: Einstein.’ Einstein demurred. ‘My relationship to ...”

“... before the launch of the NHS’s new technology arm, NHSX, Mosley hosted a meal attended by David Prior, chair of NHS England. Documents obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism show that Mosley emailed Prior the next day, thanking him for coming. Prior replied that evening: ‘Louis, Thank you for hosting such an interesting dinner and also ...”

“... miss the atlas I really wanted and come away with one or two biographies, including a memoir of David Winn, an Etonian contemporary of Francis who also died young.26 August. Do not renew my subscription to the Friends of Regents Park, one of whose aims seems to be to enforce the regulations against cycling in the Park. Ten years ago A. was fined £25 for ...”

“... and the final natural but charged image that gives the poem its conclusion and title.’ As David Kalstone pointed out in Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, however, the poem was not simply a homage to Bishop and her work, but a way of using her tone and then moving away from it, a way of separating himself from her ...”

“... is taking place today largely in memoirs and essays. This is one of many brilliant observations in David Shields’s recent manifesto Reality Hunger, in which he argues that we had best give up the novel altogether. But I don’t think the novel is dead – or, more accurately, I don’t see why it has to be dead. It’s simply being produced under the kinds ...”

“... to the ‘public good’ or else to the Jewish people, where these sometimes seem to be the same. David Blumberg, chairman of the board of directors of the National Library, puts the case this way: ‘The library does not intend to give up on cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people … Because it is not a commercial institution and the items kept there ...”