“... so often accompanies that search.’ Another piece, this one by Leone and her associate Jennifer Macdonald called Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, endeavours ‘to combine the public and private needs of recording loss. In the space of a child’s sandbox, Ashes, Ashes offers the viewer a fragile and indecipherable moment: a braille text in sand that contains ...”

“... Benn’s father led the Liberal defection from Lloyd George in 1924, and stood up in Ramsay MacDonald’s ill-fated Cabinet to argue against dole cuts in 1931. Michael died as the brave new postwar world of the UN and the welfare state was taking shape. The diaries also record Benn’s obsessive love affair with the square mile of Westminster (‘my ...”

“... into the reading room.’ And it’s used defensively, to protect her privacy. ‘Have written to David Godwin pretending not to understand exactly and hope that will keep him at bay.’ After Offshore, Fitzgerald wrote six more novels, of which two more were nominated for the Booker. Since her death in 2000 it has become common to talk of her as one of the ...”

“... among those who knew him, the puzzle remained: a born writer, but of what? Walker Evans, Dwight Macdonald and Robert Fitzgerald in their memoirs of Agee all describe an enchanting talker and an inspired observer of people. Also of cities, houses, symphonies, books, movies; one who lived hard, drank hard, and knew the force of his own feelings ...”

“... clear view of the nastiness of Lovat, and Lenman is also sceptical of that pseudo-romantic figure, MacDonald of Keppoch, whom he describes as a professional bandit: but he is not critical enough of the total selfishness of every successive MacDonell of Glengarry. The book probably goes as far as is possible in explaining Highland society as an author can who ...”

“... the Labour Movement, and risking his own leadership, than any previous Labour prime minister since MacDonald. Rather than trim and temporise, he had stuck doggedly to his guns until disarmed by his own Cabinet. It was a bold and honourable endeavour to take the measure of the trade-union problem – an attempt which has been increasingly vindicated by the ...”

“... towards its implementation.Here the postwar Conservative Party can be seen taking shape. Alexander Macdonald, a union leader, claimed in 1879 that Disraeli’s government had done more for the working class in five years than the Liberals had in fifty. And a large part of the foundations of social security and public health legislation had been laid by Neville ...”

“... It was a remarkable time at the Slade – his other classmates included Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, David Bomberg and William Roberts – and a revolutionary moment in British art. Even to express support for Roger Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibitions was daring and radical. Nevinson, having seen a contemporary art show in Venice, knew he was ‘bored with ...”

“... tradition of Tory thinking about public transport. It was in the same genre as the rumour – even David McKie has been unable to turn up a precise source – that Margaret Thatcher once remarked that anyone who rode a bus after reaching the age of 26 was a failure. It also reminded me of a story Ken Livingstone liked to recite when he was leader of the ...”

“... to go to Berne to attend a convention of European socialists, whose delegates included Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, and which produced nothing. The convention was designed as a continuation of the regular prewar gatherings of the Socialist International, at which various factions had squabbled and bickered before declaring their unshakeable ...”

“... to work on a thriller, using as his models Alistair MacLean and the Travis McGee series by John MacDonald, which focuses on a happy-go-lucky investigator with a romantic code of honour. Grant’s first stab at a name for his hero was Franklin, but one day, in an Asda in Kendal, his wife watched him grab something from a high shelf and remarked that, if ...”

“... Baldwin died’. Philip Roth has been led to histories of American racism by Coates’s books. David Brooks credits him for advancing an ‘education for white people’ that evidently began after ‘Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings’. Even USA Today thinks that ‘to have such a voice, in such a moment, is a ray of light.’ Coates ...”

“... the confidence of prime ministers. He was in the private sitting room of Number Ten when Ramsay MacDonald returned from the palace on resigning. He belonged to Chamberlain’s magic circle of lobby men, lunching with him at St Stephen’s Club once a week. He saw Harold Wilson every week too, with the other members of the ‘White Commonwealth’, as the ...”

“... on him. The front cover of Tynan’s Letters, published in 1994, features a portrait taken by David Bailey, itself a sign of pop status. The front cover of The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan is a close up of its subject inhaling, eyes shut, fingers splayed; its back cover, three shots of him in different stages of smoking – an action-sequence of sorts. How ...”

“... that property was a crime, but sponging and bad landlordship were not. G.M. Trevelyan had a David and Saul relationship of some intensity with his brother Charles, the wenching socialist baronet, who suffered from depression and aristocratic bad temper and wilfulness. If anything could have cured him of progressivism, it would have been the sight of his ...”