“... anyone willing to accept his apology.After the disturbances in the Toxteth neighbourhood in 1981, Michael Heseltine, then a member of Thatcher’s cabinet, argued that ‘tactical retreat, a combination of economic erosion and encouraged evacuation’, had been going on in Liverpool for decades, and was at least partly the result of government policy. He ...”

“... previous trip) and the registration number of my car (nobody penetrates the security barriers on foot), and looked forward to my Friday afternoon appointment at Gate 1A. It had taken weeks to set this up, but I wasn’t surprised when, a couple of hours before I set off for the Blackwall Tunnel, the tour of inspection was cancelled. Deferred ...”

“... a word Buckoke likes, and which now evokes the last major Ethiopian famine, as covered by Michael Buerk, rather than the plagues visited on Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Harden puts a brave face on things, but the litany of woes dulls the edge of his cheery manner. Candid reporting from Africa is apt to be bleak. Buckoke is a pessimist by instinct, but ...”

“... Higgins twitches and gets cramps Whenever from his headlong rush deflected. I’d like to keep a foot in both these camps, Believing the two styles, deep down, connected. They fight it to a finish frame by frame And no one doubts it’s more than just a game. Higgins has won and as the fuss subsides We realise that a game is all it is: A fish-tank show of ...”

“... black-coated, you plod out stubbornly as if in lockstep to grasp your blank not-I at the foot of the tunnel … as if asleep, Child Randall, greeting the car, and approving – your harsh luminosity. It was never decisively established whether or not he intended to commit suicide, but the coroner decided it was an accident. While the premature ...”

“... two-year stint in the Farringdon Works he never lost touch with his family or friends, he kept one foot on their ground always, and if he was – as everyone who knew him thought – happy for once, it seems to have been because he was liberated as an observer, able to store up for himself other people’s voices, hobbies (racing pigeons, football), awful ...”

“... as popular as ever among the common complainers (Fowler’s ‘grammatical parrots’). And even Michael Dummett (Grammar & Style) has come out as being vehemently against splitting, arguing that the ambiguities it sometimes causes show that it is ‘intrinsically unnatural’. Dummett also plays a remarkable German trump instead of the usual Latin joker: it ...”

“... Hailsham considered Conservatism to be ‘not so much a philosophy as an attitude’. Finally, Michael Oakeshott, the leading Conservative philosopher of the 20th century, wrote of ‘the distorting mirror of an ideology’ and identified the main enemy of limited government as ideological politics and state planning. Above all, Oakeshott laid down in his ...”

“... in February 2002, just over a month after the first prisoners arrived there, shackled hand and foot, hooded and blindfolded by blacked-out goggles. Stafford Smith’s description of a hunger strike that began on 6 July 2005, ending briefly only to start again on 11 August, is harrowing. In a parody of medical care, and in violation of the Tokyo prohibition ...”

“... match?’) and have to do a balance test: ‘walking forward with the heel touching the toe of the foot behind at each step’. They’re usually back playing within a few minutes.Nowinski likens permitting injured players to return to the field to giving a drunk the keys to his car because he insists he’s safe to drive, and Peters gives several examples of ...”

“... peanut butter paste intended for M&M’s; barrels of frozen guava juice for smoothies; a forty-foot tower of Asian shrimp and imitation crab meat; boxes containing bull pizzles, hearts and livers to be transformed into burger meat; and ‘entire lamb carcasses from New Zealand, wrapped in canvas and nestled together nose to tail on the wooden pallet, as if ...”

“... of the job of whoever’s behind the wheel is to communicate with others on the road. Whether on foot, on my bike or in a car, I engage in a lot of hand gestures – mostly meaning ‘wait!’ or ‘go ahead!’ – when I’m out and about, and look for others’ signals. San Francisco Airport has signs telling people to make eye contact before they cross ...”

“... be kept green against the possible arrival of the men in white coats. 19 January. Watch a video of Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), the first time, I think, that I have watched it all the way through since I saw it as a child at a cinema in Guildford. Then its particular interest was that the village scenes featuring the local doctor ...”

“... Bolt Court, now long since demolished. The actual figures are unconvincing. Johnson stands at the foot of the front steps, a corpulent figure with a walking stick; both his pose and his costume echo a popular engraving showing him ‘in his travelling dress’, published by Thomas Trotter in 1786. Barber stands at the top of the steps, framed in the ...”

“... humour, neither of them from the narrator’s point of view. The image of the acrobats is from Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, and isn’t, on its first mention in that book, a dream: ‘The doors are twenty feet high, as if awaiting the day when a family of acrobats will walk from room to room, sideways, without dismantling from each other’s ...”