“... ten years as an instrument of the Whig persuasion, and was to run on as such into a future that held the Parliamentary triumph of 1832, when the Reform Bill was passed, with Cockburn and Jeffrey responsible for the consequential Scottish measures. The letter plays out a comedy of the literary life. Reviewing is spoken of as a peculiar art – it was also a ...”

“... of Luxembourg, the leading candidate of the Christian Democrats. ‘Presidential debates’ were held in French, English and German (all of which both Juncker and Schulz speak fluently). Juncker came across as exactly what he is: not ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’, as the Sun has it, but a veteran of EU consensus politics who, as head of the ...”

“... with a chairman who accused me of being a disciple of Sorel, a writer of whom I had barely heard. (David Caute sardonically notes that ‘the allusion to Sorel was standard nonsense among professors of history and politics hostile to the New Left: one may search in vain for any favourable reference to Sorel in New Left ideology.’) I had also been National ...”

“... a doctorate in modern history at Oxford.A Barclays publicist responded a few days later. ‘David Barclay formed a committee of London Quakers to oppose the slave trade, and later became involved with the committee in taking the Quaker anti-slave trade message nationwide within the United Kingdom.’ He belonged on the list of slavery’s opponents, not ...”

“... a bus station with its satellite café. When the bus station was demolished, the café failed. David Mills, the Owl Man of Albion Drive, fenced the site, built hutches for his birds and excavated a carp pool. For years, nobody cared. He had, like so many others in this borough, slipped into a crack between worlds. If the council acknowledged his existence ...”

“... and was understandably having a hard time of it, he was given a new contract. He was asked by David Dein, the club’s vice-chairman, whether he was all right: ‘I think he expected me to be buzzing and grateful to him for my new deal but I just said, “Actually, David, I’m not,” and proceeded to tell him what was ...”

“... Barcelona at the end of the 19th century was a ‘bourgeois paradise’, Hughes says. It also held, according to Engels, the world record for barricade construction. Manuel Vazquez Montalban, who quotes this interesting assertion, doesn’t tell us what the record was for; quantity, say, or the speed with which the barricades were put up. It’s certainly ...”

“... In​ scope and ambition David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking is reminiscent of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Both offer a strident critique of Western civilisation. For Said, the West’s representation of the Orient is an ideological distortion in the service of Western imperialism. The Oriental is the Other against whom the West defines itself and whom it tries to dominate ...”

“... presenting the massaged facts that took us to war, and dealing with the press after the death of David Kelly. He was a gleeful fixer, bully and phrase-maker for a prime minister who had streamlined the Labour Party (as in discarded anything that smacked of socialism) until it was indistinguishable from the Tories, and oversaw a government obsessed with ...”

“... own art.In the second volume of William Feaver’s biography of Lucian Freud (Bloomsbury, £35), David Dawson, Lucian’s long-serving assistant, describes Susanna Chancellor, the woman who remained Lucian’s partner longer than anyone else, as ‘a proper woman, not one of these neurotics’. She is the girlfriend who replaced me.People don’t become ...”

“... stretched upon the floor.’ The boy turned in terror towards the wall, trying not to see. He held steady for a moment, then peeked. A beam of moonlight through the window advanced slowly across the floor with the passing of the minutes, revealing first a hand, followed by the whole of an arm, finally ‘the pallid face of a man … eyes fixed and glassy ...”

“... Strategy, a firm co-founded by Vote Leave’s head of communications and a former speechwriter for David Cameron, whose clients include Citibank, Spotify and Deliveroo. In all, according to analysis by the New Statesman, more than four times as many lobbyists as teachers ran for Parliament in July.The closer Labour got to power, the closer the business lobby ...”

“... Sam and set up business as a tailor out of the same three-room apartment on East 93rd Street that held Minna, her parents and the five boys; but the couple always had an air of waiting for something riper, and improvisation would become the family mood. With Sam, the nickname that finally stuck was Frenchy. He devoted his spare time to pinochle, whereas ...”

“... surprising that the civilian worker behind the desk was alarmed. William was arrested, charged and held in police custody until he could attend court the following day.His social workers put all their efforts into keeping him out of jail. In Scotland, most offences involving under-eighteens are dealt with through the Children’s Hearings System (CHS). Set up ...”

“... was also telling the readers of the New York Daily Tribune that he was ‘the man who is held by every party in England as the paragon of British statesmen’. Burke was revered by Tories and Liberals alike, if with rather different motives, not just for his torrential eloquence but as a politician who somehow transcended politics and as a ...”