“... stage further, for his subject, Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), constitutes a major obstacle to his brand of revisionism. Was black reaction in the marrow of Unionism from the very start? After all, Castlereagh, one of the architects of the British-Irish Union of 1800, later played a directing part in the Tory regime which, in the years immediately following ...”

“... know,’ as if mention of the Buchan title was the best he could do to suggest a highly elusive brand of sensibility. His view seemed to be that of most of the Continental jurors, who awarded the prize, quite a prestigious one in those days, to the Italian novelist Gadda for A Horrible Mess on Via Merulana. I am sure they were right, but The Fox in the ...”

“... ami, I did not write because I was beastly seedy – nerve trouble – a taste of hell.’ To William Blackwood, 12 April 1900: ‘A dog’s life! this writing out, this endlessness of effort and this endless discontent; with remorse, thrown in, for the massacre of so many good intentions.’ To Edward Garnett, 29 March 1898: ‘I assure you – speaking ...”

“... boroughs into the Chiltern Hundreds and the Vale of Aylesbury. The originators of successful brand names deserve to be remembered. According to Alan Jackson’s London’s Metropolitan Railway (1986), the name Metroland was the inspiration of James Garland, a copywriter in the company’s publicity department, who was laid up with flu but leapt out of ...”

“... he would otherwise have been denied. Did Wedgwood’s childhood illness fire his ambition? William Gladstone thought it was the making of him, turning his mind ‘inward’. Other early biographers insisted that his success was due to innate genius, rather than an accident of birth or circumstance. Tristram Hunt steers clear of hagiography, arguing ...”

“... the author follows the glow in the dark across the work of several novelists – Remarque, Mailer, William Styron, Hemingway – confirms this. ‘I have noted all the cigarettes that are crushed out, thrown away or unlit at night, shared and hoarded, detested and loved – instruments of torture and surgery, tokens of friendship and signs of love – in ...”

“... as Geneva – familiarised by British tipplers as ‘gin’ – was introduced by the Court of William of Orange in the 1690s. By the mid-18th century, a quarter of London’s population – almost exclusively from the poorer classes – had a gin habit averaging a pint a day. A survey of 1750 shows that every fourth house in the parish of St Giles was a ...”

“... him with any praise. ‘Fathers have flinty hearts,’ Tom was to observe later. The particular brand of Christianity that motivated the anti-slavery efforts for which Zachary is best known was also personally oppressive, with its image of a judgmental God overlooking our every move. The only affection Tom ever got was from his mother and sisters. When his ...”

“... of the cuts and the rise in university tuition fees then conveniently destroyed the Lib Dem brand and any threat it might have posed to the Conservative electoral juggernaut at the 2015 election. Nick Clegg and David Laws would have done better to reflect on the lessons of the 1880s. If free-market pro-EU Liberals had fought the 2015 election as a small ...”

“... who are pushing him to enact his fantasy of being a standard-bearer for reformed racists turned brand ambassadors for what is right, what is fair and being Really Sorry about the Past. He has every right to be angry. People have been falling over themselves to say what a decent cove the king is, but what father – despite a lifetime of kowtowing to his ...”

“... remembers that there was lax discipline among them. There was also friction between Lieutenant William ‘Rusty’ Calley, the only man to serve time for My Lai, and the company’s commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, even though the two shared a violent animosity towards the Vietnamese. Within a few weeks of arriving in Asia, both were involved in ...”

“... only friend Achak is surprisingly reunited with. His two best friends from Marial Bai, Moses and William K., both of whom he believes to be dead, cross his path again: William K. a few weeks after leaving Marial Bai; Moses at Pinyudo. Moses was not killed by the murahaleen, as Achak believed, but taken captive and sold ...”

“... Bank ghost hotel and wielding his Stanley knife like one of those crazy surgeons in a routine by William Burroughs. The paper Caesarean section was performed blind by the self-taught painter-poet Brion Gysin. While cutting mounts for a drawing, he sliced through several layers of newsprint beneath the card. Promoting the implications of his accident to the ...”

“... chairs with the Nazis (and letting them win) seems almost too perfect an image for the particular brand of appeasement Astor and her ‘Cliveden set’ embraced. Cliveden in Buckinghamshire had been given to Nancy and her husband Waldorf as a wedding present by his father, William Waldorf Astor, who had called it ‘the ...”

“... may have been recognised. Whatever else I do in the morning I must inspect the Burrell Collection. Brand-new and some miles away in a park. ‘Get as near as possible,’ I told the taxi driver: ‘I always fall down in snow.’ We parked on concrete and instantly a young man hurried from the massive doorway. ‘Good,’ I told myself, ‘I am expected.’ But ...”