“... in particular’. Tadeusz, melding geopolitics and theology, believed Poland to be ‘the Christ among nations’. It’s hard to imagine a more straightforward statement of divinely ordained national mission – a messianic vision based on a merging of the nation and the godhead itself. The notion of the nation as ...”

“... the villain’s moustache he had grown, he told Malcolm Muggeridge in 1940, in imitation not of Ronald Colman but of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom he adored and to whom he bore a resemblance. Above all, that harsh, thrilling, unnaturally slowed-down voice. Has anyone else ever made the loveable Brummie accent sound sinister, at least until Peaky Blinders came ...”

“... in this stopping and the spectacle it sometimes provided. The cart had to halt at the top of Christ Church View where we could all see it and this had to happen during the morning or the dinner-time break when all the school would be outside. Third, and most essentially, the Co-op horse had at this time to want to do a piss.News that this was happening ...”

“... Virgin baulked at that, and the single was released as ‘No One Is Innocent (A Punk Prayer by Ronald Biggs)’. The song takes the form of an ironic petition to the Almighty for forgiveness, for Martin Bormann and ‘Nazis on the run’, for Hindley and Brady, for Idi Amin, for the foul-mouthed Sex Pistols and for Biggs himself, who had ‘sold his ...”

“... also, and was positing a common origin for both tongues in Primitive Eldarin.Clubs: the young John Ronald formed TCBS (Tea Club, Barovian Society – a reference to Barrow’s Stores in Birmingham, the tea rooms of which were used as a meeting place), the first of many chaps’ societies, when he was at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, the setting most ...”

“... thinker was complete without an American epiphany, a journey across the Atlantic to where Ronald Reagan’s United States seemed to hum and sparkle in a virtuous free market circle of efficiency and prosperity. Apart from the reality that, for most Americans, it didn’t, the problem was that extreme pro-privatisation Brits like Littlechild thought ...”

“... right from the beginning.’ The boy had two great influences. The first was his grandfather Ronald Lyman, who his family claims received the first degree awarded by the Marconi School of Wireless in Australia, and who served in the army as a signals officer. They also say he later became a spy with the Australian security services. Craig’s favourite ...”