“... past. His bag is bulging with ancient guidebooks – among his favourites are Betjeman’s Shell county guides – and his technique is comparable to that used in Adam Thorpe’s short story ‘In the Author’s Footsteps’, in his new collection, Is This the Way You Said?* Here an obstinately backward-looking rambler uses old maps and guidebooks ...”

“... agrees with you, that your own sensitivities found their domain in the end, and that deep in the shell of your inexpensive car you came to know your subjectivity. Of course, one may find these things in the marriage bed or in a gentleman’s club, but those places have rules and your car is your own bed, your own ...”

“... messages of death and destruction. The trench line is visible too, surrounded by thousands of shell holes, filled with water from the last rains. It is a dismal sight, barren and desolate. The sky would soon be crowded with aircraft, usually with red, white and blue roundels rather than black crosses. Occasionally they would sight an enemy strafing Allied ...”

“... achieves it likely to be something of a relief. The church is interesting, though only the shell is the 13th-century original, with the blind arcading and crocketed pinnacles particularly pleasing. Nor is there a lot of garish statuary, the images of English Catholic saints standing on medieval corbels round the walls are soberly painted and quite ...”

“... that responded early, such as South Korea and Taiwan, could have been adapted and implemented. But Donald Trump and Boris Johnson chose instead to claim immunity. ‘I think it’s going to work out fine,’ Trump announced on 19 February. On 3 March, the day the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies warned against shaking hands, Johnson boasted ...”

“... of him, because he threatens them, and they know what they gave him.’ Mr Karimi had seen Donald Rumsfeld on television a few days before, demonising Saddam. ‘It was different in 1983,’ he said. ‘That was when Rumsfeld went to Baghdad and told Saddam that President Reagan wanted to strengthen military, technical and commercial ties.’ Later ...”

“... successively in mathematics, philosophy, Greek, economics (at the LSE) and law – he joined Shell, serving for sixteen years as an overseas executive in East Africa, Central America, London, Indonesia and Paris. In 1976, prompted, he would later explain, by his experience in handling trade unions in El Salvador, where he was posted during one of its ...”

“... enemy’s in the little time that is left’.After​ the election of the climate change denier Donald Trump, ‘enemy’ is not too strong a word. Trump has pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement of last year, which rhetorically committed the nations of the world to preventing a rise in mean global temperature greater than 1.5ºC. A rise of 2ºC is ...”

“... walking about the streets as much in prison as I am. That is very true, I said … One grows a shell, he said. Yes, I said, but the shell is stiff and makes sores on one’s skin underneath, and he seemed to agree to that. I shall think of that prison.Such is the seamlessness that by the end of the paragraph the prisoner ...”

“... 2012 and 2014, and earlier this year, released from the Beast and now a hollowed-out, understaffed shell of its former self, saw its managers fire a group of their own senior journalists in an unsuccessful attempt to suppress an investigation into the magazine’s finances. Newsweek was particularly vulnerable to the flood of free information and images ...”

“... There are maps, guidebooks, concordances, gift packs, de luxe editions. In 1967, the composer Donald Swann (‘Have Some Madeira, M’Dear’) wrote settings for Tolkien’s lyrics in a huge, austere-looking volume called The Road Goes Ever On. (The elvish chants were in plainsong, the entish number was a bit like Hanns Eisler. I can still sing them ...”

“... who lost to Reform, beaten by Barry Elliott, a ‘striking individual’, as Vladimir Putin called Donald Trump. She still sits on the town council, a body with few powers; it has also fallen to Reform. She told me how horrified she’d been during the last campaign at the hostility provoked by the mere mention of Keir Starmer’s name, or the sight of a ...”