“... Middle Ages,’ she observed, ‘powerful men have covered their throats.’ The anthropologist David Givens, coiner of the important term ‘neck dimple’ for the area concealed by the tie, saw the moment of the exposed male throat as a true paradigm shift. ‘In the old days of just a few years ago, you had to look powerful in business. But now ...”

“... West and Ecclesiastes) is given a round of applause. The best speech, regrettably, is David Frost’s, the best anecdote that Ned, questioned about the young man he had brought with him to supper, said: ‘If pressed, I would have to say he’s a Spanish waiter.’ Waiting at the lights this afternoon my bike slips out of my hands and slides to ...”

“... mocked the idea of direct elections to a consultative body, but in the 1970s Giscard gave it the green light, in exchange for the small states’ conceding a greater role to intergovernmental summitry. The first Europe-wide elections were held in 1979, but the Parliament’s function was still advisory. The MEPs were not lawmakers; their task was to issue a ...”

“... be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity’.I am in love with this green earth, – the face of town and country, – the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets … Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and Summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and ...”

“... to dispose of their dog, for no particular reason except to ‘simplify their life’. The boy, David, of kindergarten age, can hardly share this hope but makes no plea in the animal’s favour: ‘The dog has crammed itself behind the pipes beneath the kitchen sink. David squats before him, blowing gently on his ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... been chiming insistently with my reading of Phillip Blond’s Red Tory and my listening to David Cameron’s ‘big society, small government’ speeches. When Cameron speaks of Britain’s ‘atomised’ and ‘broken’ society, and calls for a return to a ‘broad culture of responsibility, mutuality and obligation’, or Blond writes about the ...”

“... free’ means something like the opposite of what it meant for Gowing. The aim of the co-curators, David Blayney Brown, Amy Concannon and Smiles, is to set Turner’s last paintings free from what Brown calls the ‘reductive critical stereotypes’ that have been applied to his work by those who are determined to ignore its historicity, as if its quality and ...”

“... next to trousers and a towel in the same colour; a bedspread with red and yellow hearts on it; a green plastic bottle; a grey girls’ top; a black T-shirt with a white Eiffel Tower motif; a child’s thermal vest. The Mexican authorities said all the survivors were adults. The next day a third body, belonging to another male, was discovered by fishermen on ...”

“... answer would include the English victory at Neville’s Cross the same year, which ended with King David II of Scotland a prisoner in the Tower, to be joined ten years later, after Poitiers, by King John II of France. Some might argue – and professional historians no doubt prefer multi-factored answers – that the tide turned even earlier, in 1332, at the ...”

“... simpler. ‘Dream of London small and white and clean, the clear Thames bordered by its gardens green,’ as William Morris wrote. Such dreamers are bound to feel that our own actions have caused some of today’s ills. The most specific kind of action identifiable is government policy. One effect of British social policies in the Sixties and ...”

“... they also portray the animals in their natural habitat – the grouse shelters in his covert, the green woodpecker perches on a gnarled branch, waders strut by streams, while the marine birds are framed by craggy rocks and pebble beaches. Most of the best engravings include a figure, incident or building which draws the viewer’s eye beyond and behind the ...”

“... a disunited nation, a task force could not have been proposed. Yet Labour had appeared to signal green, before there had been an opportunity for reflection within the Shadow Cabinet as a whole, let alone the Parliamentary Party, or the Party in the country. Had the military occupation taken place on a Monday to Thursday when Parliament was sitting, I believe ...”

“... the dove takes flight, bursts through the leaves with an untidy sound, plunges its wings into the green twilight above this long-sought and forsaken ground, the half-built ruins of the new estate, warheads of mushrooms round the filter-pond. Hill’s title is straightforwardly Tennysonian and so is the poem’s dank mossy texture, its stagnant ...”

“... ravers: its title was a reference to early rave music, and its original paperback jacket was a green and red concoction as garish as the sleeve of a trippy dance 12-inch. His next story collection, rushed out in 1996, was bluntly called Ecstasy. Parts of it were set at raves, but Welsh didn’t write as compellingly about taking ecstasy as he had about ...”