“... disastrous tenure as leader was brought to an end a year later, she was moved on by his successor, Michael Howard, who restored her to the ranks of heavy-lifters rather than heavy-hitters by making her shadow secretary of state for transport and the environment. In 2004 two members of the intake of 2001, Cameron and ...”

“... pink flesh, so not as nice. This is our annual holiday, and as usual I set off in the boat with Michael, Niall, Arvin and Shaska to camp on Iniskeel. We land on the little strand, walk round the island, where we startle a big bouncy hare, then we pitch the tent, collect driftwood and cook over the fire. Later, when it’s dark, we toast marshmallows over ...”

“... dead, Your wife, your child? Ros Schwartz is quoting here from a selection of Sachs in English by Michael Hamburger and others, whereas when it comes to rendering from Vietnamese, she offers the original transliterated, and then, working closely with Gansel, translates from her French versions, thereby forging a powerful echo chamber (even two steps removed ...”

“... of pre-Civil War England, the Duke of Newcastle recalled that a wealthy Cheshire knight like Sir George Booth had been proud to appear on St George’s Day clad in the livery of the Earl of Shrewsbury; and, on state occasions, the proudest courtier might, like the humblest of grooms, be clad in a costume that signalled the ...”

“... which he sometimes but not always preferred to add an ‘e’, and which he pronounced soft, as in George. Its distant origins, not unlike those of the Beerbohms, were sober Protestant German, with a talent for sticking to business. On a commercial foray in the cosmopolitan capitalist world of the 1850s the author’s grandfather married a Flemish girl, came ...”

“... the spiritual and religious concerns of The Aerodrome, hinted at by the epigraph, a verse of George Herbert’s about sin and love. Rex Warner was a Classical scholar, and his prose – carved, marble-hard, balanced – reads like a very good translation of Classical Latin. The story he tells, with children’s discovery of lost parents and of parental ...”

“... thoughtfully about from one clan grave to another while the present Stuart claimant to the throne, Michael James Alexander, was being interviewed by BBC Scotland. He is a gentle Belgian socialist who once worked as a waiter in Edinburgh but has taken up PR. ‘I felt it was important to attend,’ he told the cameras. ‘Ethnic cleansing was carried out after ...”

“... in – or, more precisely, of an attitude to life that they embodied. The book that the journalist Michael Owen wrote about the Winshaws in What a Carve Up! is given as a present to Rachel, who is told that it will help her understand the forces that shaped the country now being ravaged by austerity. The novel’s second section concentrates on Rachel’s ...”

“... mother’s execution, were alarmed to discover that the greatest of the Scottish Catholic peers, George Gordon, Sixth Earl of Huntly, was rapidly becoming his chief confidant. In 1588 James arranged Huntly’s marriage to Henrietta Stuart, daughter of his former favourite the Duke of Lennox, thus admitting him into the wider royal family. In the following ...”

“... Jennings, who died two years ago, wrote too many poems. She was careless about her output, sending Michael Schmidt, her editor at Carcanet, ‘sacks’ of manuscript work to sift through and make into a collection. Even he seems occasionally to have lost track. His sympathetic and shrewd introduction records that her own favourite among her poems was ...”

“... DNC speakers so hard their heads would spin, particularly one ‘very little guy’, presumably Michael Bloomberg, who’d implied that Trump was insane and incompetent and could brag of becoming richer than Trump without the help of his father. To my ear the most effective attack on Trump was Joe Biden’s line that it was perverse to hand over the US ...”

“... last joke in 1988 when she made an appearance on Aspel and Company, the ITV chat show hosted by Michael Aspel, one of a handful of Alan Partridgesque men who for decades had a monopoly on interviewing film stars on British TV. Taylor had recently completed her second stint at the Betty Ford Centre, where she was treated for alcoholism and other addictions ...”

“... but a makeshift coathanger he has rigged up over the bath in order to dry his anorak.14 January. George Fenton tells me of a memorial service he’s been to at St Marylebone Parish Church for Maurice Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, ...”

“... the meaningful non-statement is odd but, for the reader, it has a curiously addictive quality. As Michael Wood excellently put it, we repeatedly find ourselves asking ‘why we are smiling when there doesn’t seem to be anything to smile about’.Tóibín is not the first person to advance an interpretation of Mann as a virtuoso of life in the closet, and he ...”

“... a person of no nonsense: ‘You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind – no, sir!’ In tragedy the significance of names tends to bleed out belatedly, as part of a ...”