“... on disability benefit, so they wouldn’t show up in unemployment figures. In the early 1990s, John Major’s secretary of state for social security, Peter Lilley, began to focus on Invalidity Benefit, or, as he called it, ‘bad back benefit’. Announcing his intention to close down ‘the something-for-nothing society’ at the Conservative Party ...”

“... Sunrise promoter turned cybercriminal Tony Colston-Hayter, were straight-up capitalists.) When John Major launched his ‘Back to Basics’ campaign in 1993, ravers were an obvious target. A year later, his government passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which gave the police the power to shut down any nocturnal open-air gathering of more ...”

“... The Stud and Confessions of a Sex Maniac. Hodge had a colourful line in ex-boyfriends, including John Bindon, an actor-gangster who had holidayed with Princess Margaret and was tried for murder. The days of wine and roses for the pre-hyphenated Windsors left a few stains on the carpet, but the royals still acted as if they were beyond reproach.Mummy loved ...”

“... Palestinian sniper who had spotted him in a car on the east side. If the Daily Telegraph reporter John Bulloch hadn’t known how to apply pressure to the wound, Mr Tim, as the Commodore staff affectionately called him, would have bled to death. His wound was deeper than mine, but he was gracious with his sympathy and we stayed up much of the night toasting ...”

“... ditch, while another (a dancing master, maybe) skips into the limelight. The Elizabethan satirist John Marston was repeatedly mocked for his line ‘Let custards quake, my rage must freely run,’ but his opposition between a wobbling but self-contained cowardly custard (he is thinking of a set custard rather than a sauce) and his own free-flowing inspired ...”

“... is suddenly dubbed ‘an unregenerate southern redneck who stopped just short of the Klan and the John Birch Society’. The evidence to support these latter insinuations is non-existent. It must be obvious by now that the staff of Elvisly Yours, for all their sad unscramblable venality and potty devotion, have right on their side. This is a sick book, its ...”

“... saved or lost.’ She was sure that the devil is present in creation. She and the novelist John Hawkes had a lot to say to each other about the devil in the course of their correspondence, although in The Habit of Being we get only O’Connor’s portion of this exchange. (The trouble with books like this one is that the reader feels as if he or she ...”

“... Carlyle, Arnold’s beloved Goethe, French writers such as Girardin, and his father’s opponent, John Henry Newman. They indeed make, as commentators of all political persuasions have observed, a powerful and stimulating tradition of response to a culture moving into and through urbanism and industrialism. Arnold held his own with these great names and let ...”

“... is the spur stood on its head). But many prime ministers have fared less well: Chatham and Lord John Russell because there are few private papers; Gladstone and Salisbury because their careers were too long for any one writer to encompass comprehensively; Charles James Fox and Lloyd George because their passion to rule and their ruling passions are so hard ...”

“... army reflect, more than in most other countries, those of the society as a whole.’ General Sir John Hackett has suggested (Sunday Times, 20 June 1982) that Britain’s military success in the Falklands will probably have an encouraging influence on Sweden’s attitude to neutrality – in the face of increasing Soviet pressure, evident in recent submarine ...”

“... derives from the work of writers like William Blisset and Herbert Knust. I would have added John DiGaetani’s Richard Wagner and the Modern British Novel, which was published four years earlier, but Martin claims that a book of that title ‘by Bernard di Gaetani’ was ‘under preparation at the time of writing’. The chapter on Yeats is a tissue of ...”

“... and get them called out of any meeting. Below that level they don’t know who we are.’ The late John Osborne, who for years wrote a column for the New Republic called ‘White House Watch’, was one of the few American journalists who took the court and its behaviour seriously. He saw that personality and place in the White House yielded power to carry out ...”

“... air in tandem for emphasis (Louis Kahn, 1960) or touch fingertips together in front of the mouth (John Huston, 1946). They may clasp one another in a range of expressive moves that the face may sustain or deny – see ancient Ezra Pound (1971), grim Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1944), coy Leonor Fini (1933), and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor sitting ...”

“... loomed large in 17th-century thought. Millenarians and Messianists like Isaac La Peyrère, John Dury and Peter Serrarius expected the recall of the Jews to Palestine any minute, where they would rebuild the Temple and set up a government. Arguments about whether they would return as Jews or as converts to Christianity were common. Menasseh ben Israel ...”

“... and Star Trek enthusiast called TCP ‘Germy’ Hinton on the Oxford leg, passing by the grave of John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court wizard, an allegorical theme-park called Milton Keynes and other centres of deep and magical significance, as they go. Why are they doing this? Because they have been sent on a quixotic chase after a texte de fétiche, a putative ...”