“... been thinking mainly of the working class, separated from them by what Dickens called an ‘iron barrier’, and feared precisely because they knew so little about it. The Mazzini case was ostensibly about external affairs – the betrayal of a foreign freedom fighter – but domestic considerations clearly lay behind the Government’s stickling for secrecy ...”

“... ally against Hitler, Astor perceiving ‘a strong Germany’ on good terms with Britain as a barrier to Italy’s ambitions in the Mediterranean. In 1938, Garvin hit bottom with a leader dismissing Czechoslovakia as a ‘nonesuch state’ and complaining that Britain was being asked to guarantee ‘the racial ascendancy of the Czech minority over the ...”

“... critically important to a celebrated generation of Northern Irish poets, poets like Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Muldoon. These writers were led to him by content but stayed for the style. Auden or Eliot’s influence can be overwhelming for a writer, their tone is so settled, their territory staked out so thoroughly. But a novice poet can wander around ...”

“... the West Bank areas that were severed from the rest of the territory by Israel’s separation barrier – Palestinians can’t enter without permits, even to farm their own land, while the same area can be accessed freely by any tourist or ‘Israeli’, defined as a citizen, a permanent resident or a Jew entitled to immigrate to Israel.The fact that some ...”

“... condoms in the bedroom. The ultimate transgression is to be without protection. The condom, barrier both to conception and to infection, is an emblem of this new dispensation: the triumph of the prophylactic. Outside the old industrialised countries, in parts of the world where fewer people are exposed to television and newspapers, the missionaries of ...”

“... He stared at the tarmac as if he expected it to bubble and sweat in confirmation. Lifting the barrier at Gate 10 he warned me to drive straight ahead, without deviation, looking neither to left nor right. I’d find Mr Gibbons waiting at Gate 3A. (It was comforting, while cruising this reclaimed Tarkovsky end-zone, to see that ubiquitous boards for the ...”

“... bonanza. The soft-spoken Californian rodent was attended by his sleepover pal and minder, Michael Jackson. We have heard it stated, quite accurately, that construction work on the Olympic Park has been carried out with few casualties. But cycle deaths are mounting, from the early casualties of the fresh-painted lanes at the base of the Bow ...”

“... the user’s prior permission’, but there seems to have been no insurmountable technological barrier to it. Smartphone apps leaked data, sometimes on a large scale. ‘Your Apps Are Watching You,’ the Wall Street Journal warned its readers in December 2010.By that time, privacy-conscious people were regularly deleting the ‘cookies’ (strings of ...”

“... thick coils of barbed wire and wound them round the legs of the rig, creating an impassable barrier. The men were forced out by thirst. When the occupation ended, all 37 were tried for contempt of court, for failing to accede to a judge’s order to leave the rig. They were sent to prison for thirty days, lost their redundancy pay-outs and were ...”

“... a Lonely Hunter deserve praise for the fact that Arkin’s faulty articulation of ASL is the only barrier to a deaf audience’s understanding. Consider these strictures on Children of a Lesser God (1988): ‘many signings were cut off by the edges of the frame, executed in bad lighting, or obscured when the performer, [William] Hurt, usually turned away from ...”

“... gorilla stubbornness and negativism have been encountered and documented in our work with Koko and Michael, but certain findings indicate that this is evidence of intelligence and independence rather than of stupidity.’ Some apes may prefer playing Groucho to joining the Club. Much close-minded reasoning about propositional attitudes in animals (by Donald ...”

“... every kind to every citizen without exceptions, without remuneration limit and without an economic barrier at any point to delay recourse to it’. It was, he concluded, ‘the ideal plan ... to reduce the number of cases for which [social security] benefit is needed’. Judged by this particular measure, Beveridge’s ideal plan has failed. But the NHS is ...”

“... and Edinburgh, a similar number of people fight their way through enormous traffic jams and crush barrier-festooned railway stations to go to air shows, a ritual celebration of speed, noise, precision engineering and war. The 2018 tour calendar of the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows display team, whose nine aircraft trailing coloured smoke as they perform ...”

“... of good PR. In 1984, when Thatcher was trying to abolish the GLC, the queen opened the Thames Barrier, the capital’s new flood defence system, encouraging media speculation that she was opposed to abolition. It didn’t make any difference. The GLC was disbanded in 1986 and it wasn’t until 2000 that London got another unified, strategic ...”

“... just a master of the political dark arts, he claimed he modelled himself on a Tory predecessor, Michael Heseltine, who had pledged to ‘intervene before breakfast, lunch and dinner’ on the side of British industry. But Mandelson never had a chance to put the case. A few weeks after EDF made its move, he was on the brink of tears, listening to Tony Blair ...”