“... funk.) But whenever I read of the humiliation of some over-mighty cabinet colleague – Geoffrey Howe, say, or Jim Prior or John Moore or Francis Pym – I could picture the scene only too well:I can do no better at this stage than describe my own punishment chamber, which I call the Lady Chapel.   This is not blasphemy ...”

“... not playing it tough enough. At West Ham, it was the assistant manager (and current manager), John Lyall, who supported his guilt feelings – and in Spain, it was, I suggest, the much-praised coach, Don Howe. Much praised by everyone, that is, except Jimmy Greaves, who reminded us of what ...”

“... referring to herself as ‘head of state’ and talking of ‘I, as a government’. Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson may have fulminated against her, in the course of reviewing this book, but they helped launch the good ship Thatcher and sailed in her fatly for many a year, long sustaining and defending her against those who objected from the outset to ...”

“... over for the last forty years of his life and failed to finish. When his literary executor John Callahan appended some of these jottings to the end of ‘Juneteenth’, the ‘novel’ he extracted from two thousand manuscript pages, he gave Ellison the last word: the final note reproaches the editor from beyond the grave, along with the readers ...”

“... women his personal life, his political career depended on two tacticians. The first was Louis Howe, a scruffy New York journalist, who latched onto Roosevelt’s rising star in 1911 and never let go. He was soon using the salutation ‘Future President’. Howe forged a strong partnership with Eleanor once she had ...”

“... itself in realistically. Richardson uses as a convention the letter-writing of Clarissa and Anna Howe, but their intimacy is itself a fact to be taken for granted. The problem is that once men have invented women in fiction, it is difficult for women not to produce a counter-invention in the same spirit. Guidelines and frontiers are all too easily drawn. I ...”

“... it again, Hong Kong would be sufficiently independent to take care of itself. Had not Sir Geoffrey Howe spoken of Her Majesty’s Government’s plan to develop a representative form of government in Hong Kong? And had not Deng himself, with that Chinese predilection for four-character slogans, spoken of gang ren zhi gang – ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong ...”

“... the names of Rudolf Slansky, Ehrlich and Alter, Max Schachtman, Andres Nin, Amadeo Bordiga and John Dewey are, still, names with which to puncture an argument, break up a friendship, revise an article or inaugurate a new and daring small magazine. Keywords include ‘Doctors’ Plot’, ‘Deutscherite’, ‘PR Crowd’, ‘Vyshinsky’ and ...”

“... his own party – not least from MPs owing their Westminster seats to his popular appeal. Or so John Major came to feel by the end of 1992. Tony Blair must be thankful that things are now working out so differently for his government, and that, having been elected as New Labour, it is finding it so easy to govern as New Labour, free of the ideological ...”

“... it with phosphorus and calcium, to the detriment of rare alpine plants.A delicate issue. The John Muir Trust and the other owners of the land around Ben Nevis have constructed a ‘Memorial Site for Contemplation’ at the foot of the mountain, and are removing the memorials from the open hill. As for ashes, well, the Nevis Partnership says: try throwing ...”

“... businessman and Government minister whose politics are demonstrably to the right of Sir Geoffrey Howe can describe himself as ‘a little left of centre’ and get away with it. An equally wealthy Fianna Fail parliamentarian can describe himself as a socialist without even incurring mild recriminations from his own colleagues. In Irish political ...”

“... facilely grouped as a cetacean school of Great White Males (Styron, Norman Mailer, James Jones, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller, the recently retired Philip Roth), whose ghostly father and bearded Neptune disturbing the liquor cabinet deep into the night was Ernest Hemingway. Even those least influenced by Hemingway’s ...”

“... HAROLD SHOW.’) Mrs Thatcher started dropping into the Sun’s offices with her advisers Geoffrey Howe and Nicholas Ridley: she would accept a glass of whisky from Lamb and shamelessly flatter him – ‘What do you think, Larry?’ Lamb responded by concocting two of the most politically effective headlines on record: ‘THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT’ was ...”

“... which uses the Upper House as a clerk might use Tippex. The ‘sober second thought’ which Sir John Macdonald, the first Canadian premier (and a notable inebriate) attributed to senates is largely the stuff of legend. To see what lessons may be learned from abroad, Meg Russell has examined seven upper houses in modern democracies. Rather oddly, she omits ...”

“... because of his opposition to the despatch of the Falklands task force. Much of the anger in John Silkin’s posthumously published book is directed against Anthony Wedgwood Benn. Labour’s internal wars of the late Seventies are refought here, culminating in the 1981 election for the Party’s deputy leadership, in which Silkin stood as standard-bearer ...”