“... designed to exert checks and balances, the same aim has been pursued by different methods. Peter Catterall offers a nicely-judged account of the influence of religion, suggesting that the breakdown in the Conservatives’ traditionally cosy relationship with the Church of England has been exaggerated. Indeed, in his revisionist conclusion, he ...”

“... But as the lights go down on another evening with Tony Benn we might conclude instead that the Peter Pan of British politics has finally caught up with his own ...”

“... College, Oxford, the fact that my vote at college meetings counted the same as that of A.J.P. Taylor seemed to me, as it still does, a glorious democratic quirk of the Oxford collegiate system. I was just 26 and the youngest fellow; he was probably the most famous historian in the world. I was not long to think of him by his initials, for Alan was the ...”

“... obligatory references to dark, peripheral events like the Partitions of Poland or the reforms of Peter the Great – now fa1l into oblivion, not because they are incomplete but because they are distortions. Neither is this a matter of crude ‘equating’: of setting out to prove that the Counter-Reformation in Central Europe was as important as it was in ...”

“... The point Wittkower might have made about the Escorial, the point that one of his students, René Taylor, did make, was that it was an attempt to reconstruct that lost master-piece of architectural proportion, the Temple of Jerusalem, as seen by a Spanish Jesuit, J.B. Villalpando. Villalpando interpreted the book of Ezekiel as evidence that God had revealed ...”

“... so lucratively pursued by the Italians. He may not even have lasted in the England team. Graham Taylor, though, was always a Platt fan, and Platt owes a lot to Taylor. One of the most strenuous sections of Platt’s book is devoted to repairing Taylor’s reputation: a forlorn task, but ...”

“... Even a truly vile and racist humiliator of women is ‘more sad than bad’. Wendy, meet Peter. One reason we can accept Kate’s disillusion with her work is the poignancy of her daughter’s need for her. (‘This is my mummy. Isn’t she lovely and tall?’ Emily says proudly when Kate comes with her to school.) Another is that her job is ...”

“... last season the cheapest seat on the Kop for a match against top opponents was £45. Lord Justice Taylor’s official report in the wake of Hillsborough documented a class-divided sport, the directors helping themselves to the boardroom buffet while young fans died on the terraces. Taylor recommended that run-down grounds ...”

“... meta-analyses, so that clinical interventions and policy decisions could be based on the evidence. Peter Gøtzsche, a Danish endocrinologist who had studied bias in trials of anti-arthritic drugs, was an early recruit, and left clinical practice to set up the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. In 1999, five weeks before the Danish government was expected to ...”

“... evident reliance on Bodo Hombach, described here as having the ambition to become ‘Germany’s Peter Mandelson’, whose intriguing Lafontaine later found to be ‘intolerable’. Although the parallels with the early experiences of New Labour are fascinating, they are also often misleading. First, although both sets of social democrats eventually came to ...”

“... certainly weren’t in Northern Ireland, as Leahy demonstrates. The Northern Ireland secretary Peter Brooke stated publicly in 1989 that British forces could not militarily defeat the IRA. But, as Leahy says, the British government had realised that by 1972. All sides had dug themselves into a stalemate, though it wasn’t until 1995 that Martin McGuinness ...”

“... we are introduced to two other urbane and reforming senior judges, the late Lord Chief Justice Taylor and Lord Goff. But it was Messrs Justice Taylor and Goff who, with Lane, refused even a proper appeal to the Bridgewater Four when, with overwhelming new evidence of their innocence, they first went to the Court of ...”

“... with a scene of this kind, although the piece of meat in question is called Sandie, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. That is, unless she is called Ellie, and played by Thomasin McKenzie. I can explain this bit without spoilers. The story begins quietly, as should all stories that ultimately shriek. We are in the present. A young girl, Ellie, is dancing in her ...”

“... Paisley – who helped maintain the minority Labour government in power was fair game. Thanks to Peter Wright’s revelations we are more or less familiar with what went on in this period, though it is important to say that Wallace was the first to make public admission of these campaigns, well before Wright. Homosexual smears were directed against Edward ...”

“... the tone of politics once secularisation had made the pulpit an obsolescent model. As A. J. P. Taylor liked to point out, Lloyd George’s platform oratory owed a heavy debt to the music hall. He could control an audience with the inspired timing of a stand-up comic. His one-liner about the House of Lords – ‘five hundred men, chosen accidentally from ...”