“... and provide the skills base needed by modern industry and commerce.’ To say nothing of Sir David Philips, Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils, who remarked in 1988 that ‘decisions by the Government were “progressively leading to an unstable situation”.’ Fighting words, no doubt, but they have the unmistakably musty smell of ...”

“... unlawful – did so ‘spontaneously’, says MacGregor, or orchestrated by MacGregor’s Svengali David Hart, as others say – the new legislation demoralised the union, complicated its affairs, made its leaders look shifty as they tried to evade the sequestrators. But the two main battles owed nothing to it. In the physical battle for control of pits, power ...”

“... pen obliterating any programme listing that included black or Irish people, gays, lesbians or David Frost’. The relationship cooled when Ken junior joined the Labour Party and ceased completely when he became leader of the Greater London Council, but for a time they lived under the same roof in an intimate and sometimes disagreeable household that ...”

“... seem to leave a hangover in later lives, where she can indulge in the occasional Dubonnet, even a nice bottle of Burgundy at the weekend, without losing her equilibrium. She takes the alcohol dependency to the grave with her, or rather (since graves seem to be irrelevant) she doesn’t take it to the next cradle. It’s after Ursula has experienced for ...”

“... notebooks. Herzog said that he expected his books to long outlive his films. But there are many nice contradictions in play: the anathematiser of mass tourism is himself in perpetual flight between wilderness locations. Shooting Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin for the BBC, Herzog must have recognised the tourist invasion of Patagonia that ...”

“... Typically, Johnson has recently tossed in yet another national body he has dreamed up to make a nice headline – the Joint Biosecurity Centre – which has further tangled the web, even before it has properly come into existence.One thing that’s clear is that, as part of the Lansley shake-up, responsibility for care homes was dumped on local ...”

“... and though the subject failed to catch the attention of George Orwell, it might have been a nice thing if it had, given its place in England’s emotional life at every level and in every class. Orwell was an old Etonian, so he knew all about that, but he also spent a certain amount of time in the vicinity of Wigan Pier, where a succession of drag ...”

“... liberals, not to mention denouncing ‘woke’ intellectuals under Trump in the 2020s.It would be nice if we could distinguish between denunciations on the basis of motive, but that seems hopeless. Most denunciations are couched in public interest terms, motives are generally mixed, only God can see into the heart etc. We may be on firmer ground making ...”

“... own presidential stature and coat-tails, as well as his incomparable political intelligence. David Steel might, just conceivably, be capable of playing such a role, but Labour would never accept Liberal leadership of a joint Opposition campaign. Which means one is left with Neil Kinnock – who is incapable of playing such a role. Kinnock may be a ...”

“... aware of the difference between a ‘life of purity’, such as he found exemplified by the poet David Jones when visiting him in a Harrow lodging-house with Stephen Spender, and the ‘many lives of pastiche’. But he is aware of the origin of his woes. From 4 October 1953: ‘My deepest problem. I have changed families and at a terrible cost substituted ...”

“... v. Leviathan’, to borrow Orwell’s own terms, are inclined to hit this over-dramatic, David and Goliath note, including the mandatory weapons-upgrade from slingshot to ‘battered typewriter’ (it wouldn’t do for the typewriter to be newish and in quite good nick). Orwell does seem to have been a brave man when put to the test, but to speak of ...”

“... was fun but you threw yourself into reverse like a tractor hugging the ground in spring that was nice too more rain more raincoat                                  (‘Adventures In Living’) Who was O’Hara, and how did he learn to write like that? Born in 1926, he grew up in small towns in Massachusetts, studied piano ...”

“... Brigaders, Trotskyites, Communists, pacifists failed by their tribunals. The playwright David Hare declared recently that working-class conscripts now met ‘the officer class’ for the first time and rebelled; but plenty had met the people issuing orders, at least since Peterloo. Moreover, an Army largely unemployed except in training or retreat ...”

“... warmly disapproves; and his reasons are political. As a matter of nomenclature, I suppose it is a nice question whether a poet is mistrusting Romanticism exactly when he seeks to resist the lure of the aesthetic: it depends entirely on whether we nominate as really (‘propositionally’) ‘Romantic’ the disposition to the aesthetic or the disposition to ...”

“... to Klain, ‘that there was no way to build a nationwide pluralistic democracy based in Kabul’. David Petraeus and other generals instead convinced Obama to send in tens of thousands of additional troops. On the campaign trail in 2020, Biden promised to pull out US troops and told an interviewer that he would feel ‘zero responsibility’ for what happened ...”