“... was in crisis. Fergus Henderson serves good English food (roasted bone marrow, potted beef) at St John beside Smithfield Market and April Bloomfield does well with rollmops and devils on horseback at the Spotted Pig in Greenwich Village. And above all there’s the rising global influence of a cuisine scarcely mentioned in Steinberger’s book. When food ...”

“... in troops, seeing in him the ‘great terrorist’ he had been waiting for, or at least the John the Baptist who would come before. Whether or not he was technically a member of Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling, which became an important issue at the time of his postwar trial (he was not a great joiner: the likelihood is that his wife Marie paid his ...”

“... to think when they placed those two statements side by side? I recently listened to some of John Kennedy’s press conferences, and was struck, not by his charm and easy control of the press, the usual traits that people bring up, but rather by his quickness and conversational rhythm. Kennedy’s answers are detailed and matter of fact, and though he ...”

“... over several years. For instance, I was almost sure I would tackle the distinguished art critic John Russell’s Paris (1960), ‘with photographs by Brassaï’, but never got past the pictures. I had slightly less confidence about Maxime Du Camp’s six-volume Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle ...”

“... though, was that the references to journals were not in Dad’s handwriting, but his clerk John Cant’s. There had been delegation. Dad couldn’t be bothered to do his own skimpy, bigoted research. I felt very let down. We’d had our difficulties in the past, but I had always been able to rely on his stamina. I found I missed the personal ...”

“... has lasted ever since. But in his warm evocation of this boyhood, the kind you might imagine a John Buchan hero to have had, there is also (and not for the last time) a utilitarian chill. Aged 13, he allows himself to be seduced by the household’s part-time maid, aged 16, whom he finds in his bedroom in an inviting posture. Never one to waste an ...”

“... individual cases, including those involving three cabinet ministers, Blunkett, Charles Clarke and John Prescott. Edis told the court that while their papers were busy hacking to find evidence of other people’s affairs – in January 2003 the Sun ran a story calling Andy Gilchrist, then leading the Fire Brigade Union in a series of strikes against the Blair ...”

“... thinks, or at least not saying what one doesn’t think – is central, just as it is in John Rawls’s theory of justice of 1971. The claim that access to speech matters doesn’t flatly contradict the ‘only words’ doctrine (both are endorsed in Mill’s On Liberty). But a supporting narrative needs to be added if they are to cohabit ...”

“... you can’t bring yourself to love it. It’s a position that has its advocates. A few years ago, John Mueller’s Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to al-Qaida urged a relaxed attitude: far more has been spent on nuclear weapons than can be justified by any sensible political strategy; they aren’t of much military use; their proliferation ...”

“... for the pamphlet cowritten by Lambert, discovered after ten years searching for her ex-partner John Dines that he was not the man she thought he was. Steel found the death certificate of the child whose identity Dines had stolen, discovered that he was married and that he had been a police officer. The SDS monitored the search and, worried that Steel was ...”

“... cartoon, but before he could finish what sounded uncannily like the solicitor’s speech in John Osborne’s play Inadmissible Evidence, a year or so later, Doris grabbed my sleeve and we escaped down the winding wooden staircase, with the sound of his voice echoing behind us. In addition, my mother had one of her screaming fits and threatened to sue ...”

“... to combat or contain it – or, as the realist theorists like the late Chalmers Johnson and John Mearsheimer demand, to make the United States dismantle its bases, get out of the rest of the world, and operate at a global level only if it is actually threatened as a country. Many realists in the United States argue that such a withdrawal is ...”

“... the cloud of unknowing. The first work of Beard’s I reviewed was an exhibition she curated with John Henderson at the Ashmolean nearly 25 years ago called simply ‘The Exhibition’, the aim of which, so far as I can remember, was to shatter the glass certainties of the vitrine with some outrageous labels, hidden objects and a trail of paper ...”

“... was hardly Simonides. H.D., meanwhile, was being courted by another young poet, the American John Cournos, to whom she wrote in 1916, ‘If love of me – absolute and terrible and hopeless love – is going to help you to write – then love me’; but she made clear that ‘the great and tender and bitter Greek love is beyond my love for you.’ In ...”

“... his desperate ‘struggling, striving, writhing, clutching’ for power from his wincing colleague John Morley. The real challenge facing leaders in a media democracy was – as it still is – to focus minds. In 1886, the Pall Mall Gazette stated matter-of-factly that to be ‘interesting’ was the ‘one quality which in these days is essential to a ...”