“... The daddy in question, a brooding outdoorsman and occasional builder and handyman, is called John, but Daniel and Cathy always call him Daddy, which amuses their landlord’s arrogant son as much as their mode of dress and their way of life do. The motherless family is squatting in a hand-built house on land in North Yorkshire owned by the greedy Mr ...”

“... are alleged to belong to the ancient Sabean sect whose worshippers give primacy as a prophet to John the Baptist. Depending on the nature of what they are asked to do, I’m told, witches and sorcerers charge at least $400 for a spell or a curse, though the better-known ones can command up to $6000. Spells relate to marriage, love, divorce, good health, job ...”

“... lawyers like Victor Yannacone, who brought the first lawsuit against the makers of DDT, and John Banzhaf, who acquired the first copyright for computer code, helped develop a consumer protection movement driven by environmentalism and concerns about product safety. Their strategy was encapsulated in what Milov calls a ‘pugnacious and pithy ...”

“... Back-Bone of an Eel’. And then the rabbits began to appear.A local apothecary and obstetrician, John Howard, was the first person outside her immediate circle to examine Toft. He said he felt something ‘leaping’ in her womb. Under his supervision in Guildford, she went on to deliver a large number of dead rabbits, nine in a single day. Howard wrote ...”

“... would be prime minister and football would reclaim its place at the centre of national life. Then John Major won, and two months later England were dumped out of Euro ’92 by Sweden. The Sun put the England manager, Graham Taylor, on the back page with a turnip for a head. In 1994 England failed to qualify for the World Cup. The most important managers in ...”

“... Westminster system. The academic jurist and political theorist Neil MacCormick – son of John MacCormick, the founding father of Scottish nationalist politics – began to explore the limits of sovereignty in an era of international organisations, intergovernmental blocs, regional subsidiarity and cross-border co-operation. With the arrival of ...”

“... days, a clunky wooden casket into which revolving wax-covered cylinders were slotted) on which John Seward records his medical and psychiatric observations. Harker’s fiancée, Mina, uses another new invention, the typewriter (not yet thirty years old when Dracula was first published in 1897), to transcribe the recordings, journal entries and newspaper ...”

“... it a ‘non-imperial empire’ (channelling the doyen of liberal international relations, G. John Ikenberry, who has used a similar phrase about the US). Roberts tends to see the EU more as a single highly decentralised state than a confederation. He justifies this on the basis that the ‘European regime as a whole’ exercises state-like control over ...”

“... may suggest, the level of sheer verbal force and arresting cadence is abnormally high. His friend John Sterling registered these characteristics when he thanked him for two recent letters ‘which, unlike other people’s, have the writer’s signature in every word as well as at the end’. The project to collect, edit and publish all known letters by ...”

“... but a guy liked to have good hair. Then some magic descended on him, and the magician was John Huston, who wrote the script for High Sierra (1941). It’s the story of a veteran gangster, Roy Earle, who wants peace and a new life. But as he comes out of prison, the girl he likes dumps him and he’s on the hook for one more job. Huston saw him ...”

“... histories of music written in the 1770s and 1780s by the English antiquarians Charles Burney and John Hawkins. Three of the four surviving copies of the original publication ended up in Rome, and Hawkins received report from there of its being ‘one of the best’ of Victoria’s works. Burney, taking this up, called it ‘much celebrated’. There is no ...”

“... about Richard II, was a huge West End hit in the early 1930s; it made the name of the young John Gielgud, who also directed; Ffrangcon-Davies was Queen Anne. Tey never managed to follow up its crazy success; Ffrangcon-Davies commissioned a play about Mary Queen of Scots, but it didn’t work because Tey didn’t like Mary – too emotional, too ...”

“... society which was monochrome, buttoned-up and circumscribed, but fundamentally benign and (to use John Major’s celebrated phrase) ‘at ease with itself’. That ease was, of course, predicated on the exclusion and silencing of certain social groups: there are almost no people of colour in Ealing films – or in many British films of the 1950s, for that ...”

“... same year, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum compared the Biafrans’ plight to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. John Lennon returned his MBE as a protest against the UK’s support of the federal government. Martin Amis, then a university student, was shocked to encounter ‘an incredible reactionary … who supports Nigeria against Biafra’; the same person, it turned ...”

“... fuming China hoary,/That on thy orient rug celestial lay/Thy coat a web of treasure manifold!’ John Ruskin had rounded on Bradley for her adoration of dogs as early as 1877 (at that time, she had renounced God in favour of a Skye terrier): ‘It’s so ineffably ridiculous! … I scarcely know how to deal with you – you are too stupid! … I love dogs ...”