“... over-optimistic speech from 1992, seven months after the Conservatives had been re-elected under John Major, Benn says: ‘I have a feeling that the 1990s are going to be quite different. The whole … selfish philosophy is in retreat.’ And in a book extract from 1979, he insists that ‘the Labour Party has been, is, and always will be an extremely ...”

“... the media which gave him the most extraordinary free ride any American President has enjoyed since John Kennedy, is waning. Doubtless, Ronald Reagan will serve out his term and more Nicaraguans will be slaughtered. The latest attempt of a Republican Administration to subvert the Constitution of the United States, however, seems to have run its course. After ...”

“... Vasari coined the name ‘Fra Angelico’ a hundred years later. In 1982, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II, which is why Italian audiences now call him Beato Angelico – not just angelic, but blessed.With more than 140 pieces on display, the exhibition has enough material to chart the full arc of his career. The works are arranged broadly ...”

“... good, we should be grateful for what they have offered us, which is certainly ‘good enough’. John Roemer’s book addresses an entirely different set of questions. It takes a long, hard look at some classical concepts in Marxism and, in doing so, transforms them completely. Before I go on to explain and discuss his views, I should mention that I am ...”

“... opinion, he simply saw himself as being above the ‘rules of the game’. The incomparable John Vincent has his own interpretation of the supposed liberalism of Mosley’s early days: ‘There were no depths of idealism to which he would not stoop in his attempt to find a winning formula for controlling the post-war mind.’ Inflamed by the ...”

“... make a comprehensive move towards more open government in the manner discussed by Clive Ponting, John Ranelagh, Michael Zander and Simon Lee in Freedom of Information … Freedom of the Invididual?, a new collection of essays edited by Julia Neuberger. Three newspapers are currently being sued and two others prohibited from carrying material that discusses ...”

“... we do not practise ourselves. One of the keynotes of our epoch was struck by the Civil War radical John Warr who, writing in 1649, looked for ‘a spirit of understanding big with freedom and having a single respect to people’s rights’ (a phrase a hundred and fifty years ahead of its time). Warr contended that justice was anterior to law and postulated as ...”

“... New York and the other some weeks later in Salzburg, in a lean, semi-staged concert rendition by John Eliot Gardiner and his period-instrument Orchestre Romantique et Révolutionnaire. This was followed, again in Salzburg, by Georg Solti conducting several staged performances of Fidelio, and in New York by Kurt Masur and the NY Philharmonic doing one ...”

“... are beginning to swallow up all the agricultural land between the city centre and the villages John Clare knew. Peterborough has already accepted, at a price, the forcibly migrated rough sleepers of Cambridge. Its reward is public housing gifted by remote Kensington developers.When​ I reached the Thames, coming away from Abbey Wood station, I was ...”

“... I ran away.’ I was never able to, and never even considered it. One day my mother announced that John Gielgud was coming to Cairo to perform Hamlet at the Opera House. ‘We must go,’ she said with infectious resolve, and indeed the visit was duly set up, although of course I had no idea who John Gielgud was. I was nine ...”

“... engine types, guidance systems and fuel consumption. In 1950, Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had explained the inevitability of federation in terms that every adult Eritrean can retrieve, more or less correctly, from somewhere in the mental files: ‘From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people must receive ...”

“... he would have been disappointed. There was some half-hearted praise from Movement types, but when John Carey, for example, needed an honourable popular writer to batter the highbrows with in The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992), he turned to Arnold Bennett. Morgan’s biography had a memorable centrepiece: a description of the senile Maugham crapping on ...”

“... had been the chairman of Eurotunnel, was appointed to run the Strategic Rail Authority, created by John Prescott in 1999 to give direction to the privatised industry. Morton commissioned a report from Atkins and Ernst & Young to assess whether there was a need for such a line. By the time they reported in 2003, Morton – who was too outspoken to occupy such a ...”

“... When satire becomes surrealistic it drops off the map of genre. Unlike other Amis characters (John Self, Keith Talent, Clint Smoker), the arch-lout Asbo doesn’t carry around a name whose oddity and associations he is forbidden by the rules of the novel that contains him from recognising. He changed his name on his 18th birthday to harmonise with the ...”

“... it works in ‘Homer’s Phobia’, from Season Eight of The Simpsons, first broadcast in 1997. John Waters provides the voice of a dealer in ‘collectibles’ who admires the family’s style, assuming it’s knowingly camp. Even Homer’s record collection – The New Christy Minstrels, Ballads of the Green Berets – presses every button on the jukebox ...”