“... in the House. This leaves roughly 300 – twice the total number in the Dutch parliament – who may well be busy with constituency matters, but are unlikely to be very engaged in parliamentary or legislative activities. They remain largely anonymous, but they usually turn up, and vote as instructed. These are the MPs who are beloved of the whips, the ...”

“... My dear!’ And his eyebrows would go up as if it were some kind of statement. Which it may well once have been, but was hardly the case in 1968. 4 April. News that this year’s Royal Show will be the last ought not to impinge, and that it does is because back in 1947 the first Royal Show since the war took place at York and a coachload of us were ...”

“... to the path of dialogue. When Zhao refused to participate in the declaration of martial law on 20 May, Deng sidelined him. The military crackdown on 4 June left hundreds dead in the streets of Beijing. Three weeks later, at the Fourth Plenum of the 13th Central Committee, Zhao was officially dismissed from office on charges of ‘supporting turmoil and ...”

“... even to himself’ – came easily to the young Leibniz, and that it may later have become a settled habit. On the other hand, Fontenelle found no evidence that Leibniz ever succumbed to greed or corruption, or even to compassion or the temptations of love. There was a credible rumour that when he reached his fifties his thoughts ...”

“... generally have experienced hotter summers than this one. The severity of this summer’s wildfires may ultimately shake the complacent into changing their views. Medvedev’s statement on 30 July that the fires sweeping the country were a consequence of climate change was perhaps an early example of this, but for the moment sceptical voices are not in the ...”

“... has settled over America like morning fog over the Mekong Delta. This resurgent popular militarism may help to explain the extravagant American praise for Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn. Reviewers and publicists have missed no opportunity to point out that Marlantes is not only a Rhodes scholar from Yale but also a ‘highly decorated Vietnam vet’. His ...”

“... the servant of ethics or beliefs. The artistry of his sermons, whatever private gratification it may have given him on its own account, was a means to an end: the amendment of his hearers’ lives and the salvation of their souls. ‘The only true praise of a sermon’, Andrewes declared, is the relinquishing of ‘some evil’, or the performance of ‘some ...”

“... I say I don’t know what they call people from Wakefield. ‘Desperate,’ says the son.20 May. On his way round here Antony Crolla comes across the railway bridge at the top of Gloucester Crescent, where an old lady is feeding the pigeons. Rounding the corner he finds a man at the edge of the flock of birds who, without any concealment at all, is ...”

“... Even​ if you’ve never heard a single thing Solange has recorded, you might still know that in May 2014, in the lift of a luxury hotel in Manhattan, on the starry, starry night of the annual Met Gala, she took a swing (or several) at her sister Beyoncé’s husband, the rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. ‘Leaked’ security camera footage from inside the lift showed a shocked Jay-Z, a flustered bear of a bodyguard, Solange a kung-fu blur and the expressionless statue of Beyoncé ...”

“... response to it. Epilepsy, Grant writes, is still ‘an enigma and something of a taboo subject. We may have conquered our fear of carcinomas but conditions like epilepsy remain truly disturbing.’ This presses the case too far. But the virtue of Grant’s memoiristic approach is that it gives a nuanced and particular account of how the stigma associated with ...”

“... the same diagnosis. It isn’t just that Archie could hardly have escaped hearing about this; Cary may have wondered if there was insanity in his family line.His system was in shock; there were stories of a suicide attempt, and these books understand that his urbanity could sometimes be reduced to tatters. His relationship with Cherrill was in ruins. It had ...”

“... case and while they might all rejoice that ‘there will be a place in the globe where Englishmen may be free’ they saw that it came at a terrible price. Franklin was driven out of London. Britain was isolated internationally, trade suffered and men died. The anti-war writers were divided between those like the Radical Richard Price, who saw in America only ...”

“... if they are to be contained or ameliorated. Whatever the casuistry of freemarket apologists may suggest, investments to reduce acid emissions from power stations or to bury railways out of harm’s way are public investments undertaken in the public interest, and not in order to maximise profits. At the same time, regulations are ...”

“... insinuation, Carlyle, Ruskin and Lawrence, in their middle years, listened to no one. This may be regrettable: but I cannot see that the communication of anger, indignation or even malice, is any less genuine.’ Here, en toutes lettres, is the polemicist’s warrant. Edward’s own indignations of this period were literary carmagnoles, without ...”

“... don’t have to, he was told – we’ll get the Prime Minister to do it. And so they did: on 13 May 1974 Harold Wilson announced a ‘dramatic revelation’ to the House of Commons, a suitably purple version of the ‘Doomsday Plot’ fed to Wilson by the Army puppet-masters. Wilson even went so far as to warn the House that ‘there will be an attempt to ...”