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“... made his excuses. He had an appointment in the House of Commons at 3.30 p.m. and needed to go home to change. Wilson had been elected as Ulster Unionist MP for North Down in Northern Ireland days after leaving his position as chief of staff. As he approached his house at 36 Eaton Place, Belgravia, he was shot ...”

“... doorway. She was taken in for questioning for one reason only: her driving licence was issued in Northern Ireland. Ambushed doesn’t help us much about what happened next: Judith Ward doesn’t remember. She was suffering from a serious mental disorder. One result was that she told the police anything she thought they wanted to know. They wanted to ...”

“... Historians​ of Northern Ireland have plenty of material to work with. A book called Lost Lives (2001) records the lives and deaths of each of the 3720 people who were killed during the Troubles. Fighters, activists, officials and politicians on all sides have spoken to the media and written books themselves ...”

“... Ireland today is the place you are most likely to be happy. Your desire for a robust and rising standard of living, political freedom, strong bonds with your extended family, a marriage that survives, even a decent climate – all these wishes are most likely to be granted in the Irish Republic. At least this was the case in 2005, when Ireland came top – the UK was 29th – in an Economist survey of ‘quality of life’ in more than a hundred countries ...”

“... institution, Trinity College, from 1592 to 1952, the year in which Provost McConnell took up office and directed the College toward its present form. McDowell is a Senior Fellow of Trinity and a well-known historian. David Webb is a Fellow Emeritus of the College and Honorary Professor of Systematic Botany. ‘Virtue ...”

“... On the contrary, he was popular in every milieu he passed through: Balliol, the army, the whips’ office (it is a later invention that he was a notoriously harsh chief whip). His opponents in the Monday Club liked to identify Heath as the original of Widmerpool – Anthony Powell disavowed the attribution. In any ...”

“... a further shutter fell across his memory. He had spent his life thousands of miles away from Ireland, where he died and we grew up, in a China that ceased to exist as soon as he was gone. We knew he had worked there as a Customs Commissioner, but had little idea of what that might mean. In his last months, sitting by the fire during the damp Irish ...”

“... have found his compatriots quite so effectively disqualified in this respect. Recent events in the northern part of this kingdom give rise to serious anxieties about the integrity and accountability of our Police Forces. It is not surprising that Geoff Newman’s play Operation Bad Apple, based upon the thwarted Countryman inquiry into corruption within the ...”

“... on Irish terror (the RUC had its own infamous Special Branch to take care of activity in Northern Ireland), but as the Cold War came to an end, MI5 lobbied successfully to take over this function from the police. By the 1990s, then, Special Branch found itself at a loss. The growth of Islamism, it seemed, was of no interest, despite the granting ...”

“... people in the Borough of Islington than in Newcastle, and more in the whole of London than in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales put together. Nearly half the children in Inner London come from families on Income Support, more than twice the average for the UK as a whole. London contains 13 of the 20 most deprived areas in the country, and 94 per ...”

“... This ultra-sensitivity has inevitably increased the importance of the media managers. When the Northern Ireland negotiations got serious Tony Blair took Alistair Campbell into the room with him and insisted that Mo Mowlam remain outside. David Trimble was astonished but that’s how it always is with New Labour. Andrew Rawnsley records how the ...”

“... is, at the time of writing, under acute psychiatric care in a Belfast hospital, after a BBC Northern Ireland documentary revealed that she had, at the age of 59, solicited £50,000 from two property developers to help fund a business run by her 19-year-old lover, Kirk McCambley. She has some experience of the mental health profession. In June ...”

“... not to mention many of our trees and houses, have longer histories than our country. My family home in Bouillon, on the French border, is decked with photographs of relatives who were born before Belgium was created. There are wooden clogs under the stairs that are older than Belgium. My family is working-class and post-industrial: Walloon first, European ...”

“... for each chapter lands the author in the absurdity of dividing up Powell’s time in Northern Ireland between one chapter called ‘The Ulsterman’ (which, for all his conscientious application, Powell patently was not) and one-called ‘The Philosopher’ (which in a broad sense Powell has been, but not especially then). Having chosen an ...”

“... In office, but not in power’. It seemed unlikely that anything ever said by Norman Lamont would make history, but this phrase from his resignation speech struck a chord. A common charge against Labour governments throughout the century has been that they have been at the mercy of other people’s power; that the combined influence of hostile bankers, businessmen, judges and media moguls ‘blew them off course’, as Harold Wilson put it ...”