“... some special territory? Had there been a football match? Were we being punished for the skills of Gary Lineker? As we run, I feel a heavy blow on the top of my head, the blow struck with a short length of steel scaffolding which Rupert sees the fair-haired youth pick up from the ground. Fortunately, the scaffolding doesn’t come instantly to hand, and he has ...”

“... spoken or responded to language again), he drew constantly, producing large, hypnotic images on brown paper bags or donated rolls of examining-table paper of the type you see in doctors’ surgeries. His characteristic subjects include arid Mexican landscapes and hills (often with train tunnels and trains coming through them), horse-riders, deer and ...”

“... check) and a gorgeous pale tweed sports jacket, dotted with tiny delicate flecks of brown and black. He held his alto gently in the crook of one arm. He smiled faintly at me – a low-rent Lucifer – and was humming quietly. You’d be so – o – o – o – nice – to come home to! He reminded me at once of those hunky young hard-drinking ...”

“... not that long ago. The filming marine is breathing heavily. He climbs out of the trench into a brown winter wood where every branch has been snapped and torn by bullets and shrapnel. Later, he will upload this to the internet.There is a terrible, bleak genre of video in which soldiers at the threshold of death film themselves; a kind of farewell message to ...”

“... tonnes of spuds a year for its domestic market, but Irish potatoes have a high sugar content and brown too quickly to make good chips. In 2017 Ireland imported almost 72,000 tonnes of potatoes from the UK, typically Marquis or Maris Piper.Cute hoors (Irish slang for crafty, cunning or sly individuals): In 2017, 50 per cent of Irish beef exports – valued at ...”

“... one of the roads leading out of town.’ ‘He was happy. He seemed cheerful,’ says Guardsman Gary Alderson, who was next to Wakefield in the snatch. ‘Seemed happy all the way round. I was facing rearwards, he was facing forwards.’ Two hundred metres short of the zone called Green 6 there was a loud explosion and what some of the soldiers describe as ...”

“... named Tariq say: ‘I see no difference between us and the Palestinians.’ I heard Captain Todd Brown say: ‘You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force – force, pride and saving face.’ I heard that the US, as a gift from the American people to the Iraqi people, had committed $18.4 billion to the reconstruction of ...”