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“... the greatest ideas.’ Rejecting one of them, a pitch for a Marvel project constructed around David Schwimmer from Friends, the executives reached a consensus that ‘David Schwimmer had no charisma and was a little bit derided.’ Then they high-fived one another over Lee’s head.Professional humiliations didn’t ...”

“... not quite know what to do with them. The illustration on the front cover is by a Scottish artist, David Wilkie. John Rennie makes an appearance as one of ‘the most iconic figures of the age’. Thomas Chalmers features as the ‘spiritual guide’ of the Liberal Tories. Adam Smith, of course, is ‘central’. Mechanics ...”

“... been a part of his work; Outcast London began with a survey of British economic thought from David Ricardo to William Stanley Jevons. Now, Stedman Jones’s commitment to the constitutive power of language propelled him down a path that eventually led to a tamed version of social democracy. In An End to Poverty (2004), he sought to recover a lost ...”

“... of the theatrical potential of language. Even personal letters – like this to his friend William Smith – turn into imaginative performance: Infallible Doctor,   Let this apologize for long silence. – Your request would have been long since granted, but I know not what it is best to compose: a Hindica-syllabum carmen ...”

“... restrictions, left-of-centre figures such as Cook, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett and Chris Smith have been allowed to surround themselves with like-minded ministers. The man who has replaced the Blairite factotum Stephen Byers, for example, in charge of minimum wage and trade-union rights, is Ian McCartney – a Prescott protégé who declared not long ...”

“... that obedience to natural law means ‘that every man shall pursue his own happiness’ (echo of David Hume and foretaste of Bentham himself?). The puzzle is rather, as Ross Harrison suggests in his discussion of Bentham’s thought as a whole – a considerable achievement – why Bentham did not enlist natural law as an ally of utility: they had much in ...”

“... a position is lost neither on his enemies nor on Mandelson, who tasted internal exile under John Smith and did not relish it. Belatedly weary of his Cardinal Richelieu reputation and riled by taunts that he is a hollow man without personal beliefs, the response has been a 100,000-word credo to show he can be a real politician like his grandfather, Herbert ...”

“... and less astringent productions like A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), plus memories of Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie, gave rise to a late-life idea of her as a treasurably naughty grande dame, all genteel camp and classily to-the-point prose. Others, however, saw her as a glamorous point of contact with developments on the Continent. She showed an interest ...”

“... more mysterious. They have been the subject of two previous books, by Mollie Gillen (1972) and David Hanrahan (2008), both called The Assassination of the Prime Minister. Linklater doesn’t add much information or evidence about the event itself, but he puts it in context, and provides fascinating if overblown speculations about the supposed ...”

“... which we have fallen. 2 June. The wheels are coming off. This morning it was confirmed that Jacqui Smith will be standing down as home secretary come the reshuffle, which is feverishly anticipated as soon as the Euro elections are out of the way. No great surprise, but how come it leaked out now? A little while later Beverley Hughes announced that ...”

“... creationist predecessors thought, but good design doesn’t require a designer. Thus John Maynard Smith once defined biological adaptations as the sorts of trait that natural theologians would have mistaken as evidence for the creator; and it is the reason Richard Dawkins, while gleefully stamping all over the nonsense spouted by intelligent-design ...”

“... which had allowed them to produce six classic films in six years. The Hollywood moguls David O. Selznick and Sam Goldwyn were less successful partners: Gone to Earth (1950), a Hardyesque pastoral, became a bizarre vehicle for Selznick’s wife, Jennifer Jones; The Elusive Pimpernel (1950) was recut by Goldwyn, who demanded straight adventure and ...”

“... the landmarks of Marxian economic thinking include Ernest Mandel’s Late Capitalism (1972), David Harvey’s Limits to Capital (1982), Giovanni Arrighi’s Long 20th Century (1994) and Robert Brenner’s Economics of Global Turbulence (2006), all expressly concerned with the grinding tectonics and punctual quakes of capitalist crisis. Yet little trace ...”

“... other trappings of an upwardly-mobile prick.’ Marks was into St Katherine’s Dock years before David Mellor. Into the revamped wetlands before The Long Good Friday. But it was the same old cocktail: drugs, guns, Arabs, falcons. Flemingesque vulgarity: ‘Crême brûlée with Château d’Yquem made for a good dessert.’ The karma of cash. ‘It’s always ...”

“... of residence or identity and I’m sent home to get them.14 May. A piece in the Independent about David Blunkett tackling falling standards in education. I am pictured, though whether as evidence of decline or hope for the future I can’t make out. Either would please me.Judging from newspaper reports, the congregation at Ted Hughes’s memorial service in ...”