“... are you still here?’It’s not that they don’t still fish out of Grimsby. One morning I met Andrew Allard, who runs a ten-vessel outfit called Jubilee Fishing from an office in the docks. When he showed me on a map on the wall where his boats were at that moment I got a sense of the big world of the Grimsby fishermen, how unprovincial it had been to ...”

“... financial numbers and gee-whiz facts. The oil boom has, for example, created Britain’s busiest port, which practically nobody has heard of, Sullom Voe in the Shetlands, and brought in its train such monsters as ‘the biggest movable object on earth’: the central platform of the Ninian field, which had to be towed northwards into position by no fewer ...”

“... In Amsterdam coffee houses, he had tried to enthuse Dutch bankers with ‘a Common Wealth and free port in the Emperour of Dariens Countrey’. In Brandenburg, he had offered to make Prussia’s glory in a German-speaking Darien. Nothing came of any of that. Now Paterson turned to the Scots. At first, they were sceptical about Darien, preferring a trading-post ...”

“... judicious account of Nabokov’s life in the States, and, post-Lolita, in Montreux. Disposing of Andrew Field, his predecessor in the field, Brian Boyd cites his insolent, perfunctory response to one of Nabokov’s factual corrections. Told an event had taken place in July and not on ‘a wet autumnal day’, Field emended the phrase to ‘a wet autumnal day ...”

“... towpath of the Lea Navigation towards the span of the M25 overpass at Rummey Marsh. The filmmaker Andrew Kötting, the driving force of the expedition, is a stocky alpha male with a deep trench of damage in his right leg after a motorcycle collision on the Old Kent Road. He is dressed in a sack of a suit covered with marker-pen Enochian symbols. On his head ...”

“... US’s determination to be granted equal access and fair treatment in China’s European-dominated port cities – and the continuous extension of American capitalism towards ever larger markets, first across the continent, then across the Pacific and beyond, doesn’t square with Anderson’s view of a predominantly protectionist United States before the ...”

“... economy. Before the war, 80 per cent of Yemen’s food was imported, mostly through the Red Sea port of al-Hudaida. At Saudi insistence, backed by the US and the UK, the UN Security Council imposed a blockade on Yemen and while there’s an exemption for food, the inspection procedures are slow and laborious. Since Saudi aircraft bombed the container docks ...”

“... mainstream French democracy than the American-style ‘populism’ practised by politicians from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush. The word populiste is a deadly insult, most recently deployed by socialists and Chiraquiens alike against anyone who dares interpret the result of the referendum on the European Constitution as a vote of no confidence in the ...”

“... head west for about 40 kilometres into the Gaeltacht: we’re to have lunch with an old friend, Andrew, in the Beehive Bar near the coast. He’s there in the car-park having a smoke. I manage to refuse his offer of a Sweet Afton, and as I do so he notices my copy of Dean Godson’s biography of David Trimble, Himself Alone, lying in the back seat with ...”

“... in this beloved hemisphere’ would soon make possible a ‘free trade zone stretching from the port of Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego’. Latin America’s conversion to free trade was short-lived, however. In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela, and Latin America began another turn to the left. In one country after another, self-described ...”

“... that detectives didn’t carry out checks that could have prevented the serial killer Stephen Port from murdering at least three of his victims. The victims’ families believe that this lack of care was motivated in part by homophobia – Port met his male targets on dating apps. Detectives also failed to take such ...”

“... There were messages of endorsement from Lady Antonia Fraser and the feisty historian Andrew Roberts; the Economist saluted the new edition as ‘impeccably postmodern’; 5000 free copies were distributed to schools, a Trojan horse for early indoctrination in traditional values that would be reinforced by emphatic TV explainers vamping through ...”

“... freedom, as far away as possible from the white man’s freedom to dominate others, as espoused by Andrew Jackson, George Wallace and Trump. These radical traditions have always been embattled, but they have not vanished, and they have been enriched and reinvented by successive waves of immigration.Athird generation​ American, born in 1972, I am an heir to ...”

“... it off – until Roman Polanski walked in with his usual compliment of nymphets. ‘Roman, this is Andrew Lloyd Webber.’ Time to run. The first chapter of the book, the prison time, was worked through many drafts. It’s the strongest, freshest aspect of the story. You know that Marks wrote it. He’s there, in the narration, not reporting on the video of a ...”

“... the late 1840s, when the US seized Mexico’s northern half, including California, and renamed the port town of Yerba Buena after the Italian saint. It has always been populated by dreamers, eccentrics and bohemians as well as opportunists and profiteers; until recently there was room for all of them. The Big Four railroad barons were Sacramento merchants who ...”