“... to the ‘public good’ or else to the Jewish people, where these sometimes seem to be the same. David Blumberg, chairman of the board of directors of the National Library, puts the case this way: ‘The library does not intend to give up on cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people … Because it is not a commercial institution and the items kept there ...”

“... the world.’ By the 18th century the ruling classes had become sceptical about witchcraft and the laws against witches were revoked or allowed to lapse. The sabbat became a historical curiosity. In this century, witches have become feminist and New Age icons, revered as victims of a Christian patriarchy’s persecution and ...”

“... this local diorama of frivolity and falsehood, however, lie ostensible truths of universal scope: laws of the heart and mind operative everywhere, abstract and absolute, secrets brought at last to light by art, unmediated access to which readers anywhere on earth can gain. Proust was not, of course, the first novelist to issue such existential edicts, even if ...”

“... palace coup in Oman in 1970 and – last but not least – three abortive plots, farmed out to David Stirling and sundry other mercenaries under the initially benevolent eye of Western intelligence services, to overthrow the Gaddafi regime between 1971 and 1973 in an episode known as the Hilton Assignment. At the same time, the story of Libya in 2011 gives ...”

“... evidence against Dreyfus, which in fact did not exist, could not be revealed in court. David Miliband recently used exactly the same argument to justify withholding details of Great Britain’s policy on and, the evidence suggests, complicity in rendition and torture. National security as the cover for the erosion of civil liberties is something we ...”

“... blue-framed glasses, floppy dyed-blonde locks and middle-aged paunch, I was beginning to resemble David Hockney. But she has become a lot less dangerous overall. I take advantage of her inattention and quiz Blakey under my breath: Do you think I look like a MAN? B. gives me an appraising glance but is non-committal. Then everything lands on our table in a ...”

“... a dizzying subplot, he also involved himself intimately in the quarrel between Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion over the project of a Jewish National Home, and in the attempts by both to play off the British against the Americans. And, though he showed himself able to take risks in leaking classified material that favoured the Zionist cause, he also found ...”

“... Natalie Rolls, also a Blyth councillor, didn’t return my calls. The town’s Reform mayor, David Swinhoe, was also shy. Nor could I reach the most prominent Reform councillor from Blyth, Barry Elliott, the Trump-like figure who came second to Ronnie Campbell in 2015 and who beat Deirdre Campbell in this year’s county council elections. Elliott is a ...”

“... the Federal Election Commission, which oversees and enforces election and campaign finance laws, is now essentially defunct. Its members, evenly divided between the parties, serve six years and must be confirmed by the Senate. Since becoming majority leader, in 2015, McConnell has refused to confirm any new appointees. As the members rotate off, there ...”

“... 12 June, the arrows indicated that the German army was twenty miles from Paris. (Not on the map, David and Wallis Windsor leaving France in a convoy of cars loaded with their luggage.) Harriet and Clarencesaw that the illuminations had been switched off in the Cismigiu. The park, where people walked in summer until all hours, was now silent and deserted, a ...”

“... since it is the Commission – the EU’s unelected executive – alone that can propose the laws on which the Council and (more notionally) the Parliament deliberate. The violation of a constitutional separation of powers in this dual authority – a bureaucracy vested with a monopoly of legislative initiative – is flagrant. Alongside this hybrid ...”

“... had enough younger people whom I admired, and still had my old chums from the Review, Colin, Hugo, David Harsent; they just carried over and became part of this larger thing.Did you get any help from the eminenti who’d tried to float a magazine?None at all. I didn’t really know them. And didn’t admire them, particularly. There was a whole social aspect ...”

“... and deep distrust of law enforcement never far from the surface. It wasn’t the repartee of David Milch’s cod-Shakespearean TV series Deadwood, but it was impressive. These people were unafraid to state the obvious, or to test established principles against their own instincts. It seemed to me that the traditional regard for civic responsibility was ...”

“... Sir John Sunderland, Roger Carr, Rick Braddock, Ellen Marram, Guy Elliott, Rosemary Thorne, David Thompson, Sanjiv Ahuja, Wolfgang Berndt, Lord Patten and Raymond Viault. Only Berndt replied (Chris Patten’s assistant told me he was in ‘rural Asia’ without email, then, when the deadline was extended, too ill to respond). Berndt told me he ...”

“... own half-Kurdish origins – he came from Malatya in the east – and to loosen the most draconian laws against the use of Kurdish as a language. But on his sudden death in 1993, Demirel grabbed the presidency, and torture and repression intensified. The rest of the 1990s saw a succession of weak, corrupt coalitions that reproduced the trajectory of the ...”