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“... hairdressers, on the BNP. ‘Fucking Pakis,’ one of the Yobs says. It is 11 September 2003. I cross the road and ask a policeman where to go for the press briefing. He points in the direction of a checkpoint set up by al-Muhajiroun. Al-Muhajiroun are holding a conference to commemorate the 19 mujahideen who gave their lives for the cause of jihad. I am ...”

“... on the subject and some have been no less alarmed by what they have seen in the chapel itself. Robin Richmond’s Michelangelo and the Creation of the Sistine Chapel is a popular introduction which will rightly enrage anyone who has been alarmed. ‘I grew up in Rome and was so familiar with Michelangelo that I never questioned whether his work looked now ...”

“... for her. He explains that he’s only doing his job: Occasionally a couple may be permitted to cross to the island together, but this is rare. It requires an unusually strong bond of love between them. It does sometimes occur, I don’t deny, and that’s why when we find a man and wife, or even unmarried lovers, waiting to be carried over, it’s our duty ...”

“... hearing: he wanted access to the evidence that might be used to criticise him, the right to cross-examine witnesses who gave evidence against him, and the right to be represented at the inquiry by a lawyer. Maxwell took his battle to the Court of Appeal twice and lost both times. To understand the significance of these cases, it’s important to ...”

“... that this smiling young Scottish public schoolboy could be the next prime minister doesn’t cross either of our minds. On the other hand, John Birt is suitably impressed when I tell him that I actually met the great Lord Reith on the day of his extraordinary speech in the House of Lords likening commercial broadcasting to the Black Death. It was as if ...”

“... waiting at the lights by St Mark’s Church when a family – grandfather, son and grandson – cross. The grandfather says he’s been trying to explain to his grandson what a Loiner is (i.e. someone from Leeds). I say I’m a Loiner but a bad example. ‘That’s all right,’ says the grandfather. ‘We’re from Wakefield.’ I say I don’t know what ...”

“... a daily event, although there was little chance of exposing it in the absence of competent cross-examination. An entrepreneurial legal profession, well represented in Parliament and close to the judges, was becoming aware of a large new market for its services. But to break into it required fundamental changes in both law and legal culture, starting ...”

“... exploiting well-worn anecdotes. Moorcock sketches his version of the late Derek Raymond (a.k.a. Robin Cook) as a Soho revenant: ‘Cookie was still alive in those days . . . and telling your stories back to you faster than you could recount them.’ Much of King of the City is like that, using the ‘twist’ to reconstitute chat rehearsed by Moorcock in ...”

“... playing Captain Boyle at the Lyceum. Laurence Daly of the Miners’ Union, John Mackintosh MP, Robin Cook. The Hamilton by-election had taken place six months before, and the advent of the SNP had kicked Scottish politics into life. It was a talking rather than a dancing party, and the politics themselves seemed intoxicating enough. Around two we processed ...”

“... Maida on her fabulous estate, and to be tutored and counselled by a glamorous young couple named Robin and Bunny. In the subsequent books, the Big Eight, as the children are called, study in Maida’s Little School, summer at Maida’s Little Camp, and have endless adventures in exquisitely equipped schoolrooms, libraries, gymnasiums, theatres and house ...”

“... with the burgeoning folk romance of the bushranger, the colony’s own mythicised hybrid hero, a cross between a thuggish highwayman and Robin Hood. The bushranger, as a symbol of the idea of liberty and of the possibility of defiance against a harsh penal code, was eventually to settle into the more-or-less-actual ...”

“... and the wink – the composer in the first, tone-setting story in his collection of short stories, Cross Channel (1996), is called Leonard Verity. In Barnes’s latest confection, set in the not-too-distant-future, the wealthy and unscrupulous entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman imports and rebuilds all the major English tourist attractions on the Isle of Wight and ...”

“... page of her introduction contains references to Wayne Koestenbaum, Gertrude Stein, George Oppen, Robin D.G. Kelley, Judith Butler, Fred Moten and Wendy Brown. In as far as this amorphous work can be defined, On Freedom is an example of a recent genre that takes as its subject the phenomenon of mass scolding on the left – you could call it ‘cancel ...”

“... the coldest winter for years’); the frequent cut-away for exposition or meditation (‘The late Robin Williams, in his role as the inspirational English teacher in Dead Poets Society, has his pupils gather round a faded photo… “Carpe diem, boys”’), then the cutting back; the cameos (‘At the junction of Fitzroy Road and Chalcot Road we meet the ...”

“... some nice bits of furniture but the atmosphere (well-heeled retired couples, women in sharp little Robin Hood hats, men in Barbours) puts me off, and having driven fifty miles to get there, I spend ten minutes looking round, then beat a quick retreat. I drive back over upper Wharfedale to Kettlewell on a road that used to be deserted and scarcely ...”