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“... George Cony​ , a London merchant, had once been a friend of Oliver Cromwell. But when the Lord Protector slapped a tax on silk imports without the consent of Parliament, Mr Cony protested that this was the sort of arbitrary behaviour for which Cromwell had lambasted the late king, and demanded that the unjust tax be repaid to him ...”

“... remains faithful to Ronald Reagan at the precise moment when the rest of the country seems about ready to wash its hands of him. In retrospect, the Administration could, somehow, paper over the budget deficit and the disaster in Lebanon, the trade deficit and the bumbling fiasco that was Reykjavik, but when it turned out that it had truckled to the Ayatollah ...”

“... effort of will that must have been involved in simultaneously writing The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, then beginning Nicholas Nickleby nine months before Oliver Twist was finished as relentless monthly serialisation schedules obliged him to meet deadline after deadline. By the time the tenth and last child was ...”

“... year later, Smith dictated the entire book – apart from the lost section – to a student called Oliver Cowdery, in a matter of weeks. This time, according to contemporary accounts, Joseph relied primarily on a seer stone he had had since 1825 (and used at one time for money-digging). After showing the gold plates to two groups of intimates Smith gave them ...”

“... as farce or fiction. What is one to make of an organisation whose leaders have names like Dummy Oliver, Blinker Hall, Biffy Dunderdale, Lousy Payne, Buster Milmo, Pay Sykes, Tar Robertson, Barmy Russel and Quex Sinclair (not to be confused with his successor but one, Sinbad Sinclair)? It’s no good reassuring the reader that in the transition from ...”

“... Justice of the Supreme Court looms up out of a dark and stormy night, semi-automatic at the ready, and tells the hero, ‘don’t play games with me . . . I know your father hid something in the teddy bear,’ you should be able to look back at what has already happened, slap your forehead, and think: ‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? The ...”

“... analogies of subject that focus in several instances considerable differences of treatment. Oliver Sacks’s stirring ‘The Leg’, a true story of paralysis which deals in eloquently measured prose with, the author’s loss of the sense of his left leg, and which itself teaches by precise and humane example the ‘conjunction of science and ...”

“... also consistent with deep personal sincerity, and such sincerity will often be one of its causes. Oliver North, for instance, was not a hypocrite in any conventional sense, in that his behaviour was neither primarily self-serving nor inconsistent. It was North’s sincerity that enabled him to subvert the institutions for which he worked, and turn them ...”

“... figures to be aware of their own shortcomings, and thus Jade became a soothing antithesis to Jamie Oliver’s confident over-achieving. Suspicious of tireless do-gooders, the country embraced its Goody. But happiness, as the melodrama goes, was short-lived. Jade’s decline began, we irrationally feel, during her argument with Bollywood ‘princess’ Shilpa ...”

“... his mysterious patient, he is helped and hinder-ed in equal measure by Gurney’s roommate, Oliver Lyle (another of Edric’s damaged creations). Irvine finds himself increasingly irritated by the need to tiptoe around Lyle, who is the older man’s long-term companion and self-appointed protector from their previous asylum. Edric hints at their ...”

“... astrological time, and its chief spent his evenings discussing Armageddon theology with strangers. Oliver North recruited convicted narcotics smugglers to run the secret war against Nicaragua. George Bush recruited Manuel Noriega to the CIA. As the Watergate hounds closed in, Henry Kissinger was implored to sink to his Jewish knees and join Richard Nixon in ...”

“... to stand in need of (something salutary, but often not desired)’. Did not the great Goldsmith (Oliver, not Jimmy) write: Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long? Alas, the philistine committee, rationed to one brain per member, and wanting the sort of instant erudition which the SOED might have offered them, remained unimpressed by ...”

“... only three actors on stage, stick-figures in the distance – bowler, batsman and a wicket-keeper ready to stump him – supported by a whole chorus of fielders, dancing in a phalanx of 15. You are glad that these days actors are professionals, loud-voiced at least, terrifyingly loud, in fact, and that tomorrow Sophocles will not be repeating his error of ...”

“... in The Pioneers, which culminates in the marriage of Marmaduke Temple’s daughter Elizabeth to Oliver Effingham, scion of a family that, like the DeLanceys, had stayed true to King George. Somewhat implausibly, Effingham is also the adopted son of the Indian tribe that once lived on the land that came into the possession first of Effingham’s father, and ...”

“... at least well-intentioned. Now we have another decade of the self-interested and the self-seeking, ready to sell off what’s left of our liberal institutions and loot the rest to their own advantage. It’s not a government of the nation but a government of half the nation, a true legacy of Mrs Thatcher. Work is the only escape, which fortunately moves along ...”