“... desired to escape. The regime under which I grew up reserved the cinema for two sorts of occasion: winter, and rainy afternoons. Winter came round with its own relentlessness, and it began on the day when the clothes I had been wearing for the past few months (aertex shirts, khaki shorts, cotton underpants) were, without any ...”

“... the British Communist David Crook who did most of the spying on the Orwells – and, according to Gordon Bowker in his biography of Orwell, Crook went on to suggest that Eileen was having an affair with Kopp. The snakepit from which the Orrs scrambled when they left for France was deep and dangerous. Like many of their kind, they never quite put it behind ...”

“... emphasises that Gladdie is no ignoramus. She is devoted to the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon and startles her in-laws by quoting from ‘The Sick Stockrider’, the most resonant of all bushranger ballads:’Twas merry ’mid the black-woods, when we spied the station roofs,To wheel the wild scrub-cattle at the yard,With a running fire of ...”

“... school holidays I saw more of her: we’d go frequently to Wembley Pool in the summer and in the winter she’d take me with her to the West End once a week, to shopping at Selfridges and tea at the Cumberland or the Regent Palace, often together with some gentleman friend. In the evening she’d go out to the pictures or the theatre or a whist drive or a ...”

“... or Edwardian toy butchers’ shops. They’re bigger and grander than the one Dad made for Gordon and me c.1940 but whereas these joints are nailed into place, Dad’s were all made to unhook so we could serve them to our imaginary customers at the counter. 25 February. A propos civil liberties the government spokesperson most often put ...”

“... for the music. When, at the end, he simply thanked everyone and announced a forthcoming series of winter concerts, he unleashed what one journalist described as ‘an almost hysterical outburst from the packed crowd’. Writing soon after in the Radio Times, Sargent described the promenaders’ antics as being no more than a ‘mild rag’. Nevertheless, the ...”

“... it (‘When Thatcherism becomes a “wasm”, everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about,’ Gordon Brown was still quipping in the LRB in 1989). The Leninists to the left of Labour, meanwhile, were looking at history as a ‘series of repeats’ – crisis, general strike, Winter Palace, here we come – although ...”

“... sociopath. In ‘Elements of Anti-Style’, McLaren recalled the weeks he spent in New York in the winter of 1978 trying to help Vicious beat the rap for Spungen’s death. ‘I’m still not entirely sure why: maybe because I felt that there was no one more fun than Sid. He never saw a red light; he saw only green. He was chaos incarnate, and he made my blood ...”

“... of me: I’ve made my two great discoveries – the religious about 4 years ago, the other in the winter of 1902 … I may sit year after year in my pretty sitting room, watching things grow more unreal, because I’m afraid of being remarked.’ ‘The other’ – that he was himself ‘other’ sexually – was not a happy recognition for someone ...”

“... a thrill and a zest to life. It is an experience in having no traditions to live up to.’ One winter in the early 1990s I took an overnight train from Georgia to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. There were no planes: Armenia was at war with its neighbour Azerbaijan, and under blockade. Snow came through the ill-fitting windows of the sleeper as it ...”

“... reshaping of the landscape and positioned the Conservatives to exploit it in the coming fight with Gordon Brown, New Labour’s heir in waiting. ‘Imagine a Tory leader promising that when his government came in there would be no special favours for those who contribute to Conservative Party funds; for employers, businessmen and the City; for big ...”

“... the ‘London laundromat’ has cleaned kleptocratic cash without fear or favour. Since 2008, when Gordon Brown introduced the Tier 1 ‘golden visa’ scheme, 905 Russian millionaires and their families have come to the UK. The scheme was scrapped on 17 February. According to Transparency International, since 2016 ‘Russians accused of corruption or links to ...”

“... In her rollicking Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds (2010), Lyndall Gordon suggests that Emily would not have taken well to being excluded from areas of her own house for hours at a time while her brother and his mistress did God knows what behind closed doors. Lavinia, on the other hand, quickly became an accomplice, often ...”

“... 1800 one third of the cows and horses in the county were killed for want of fodder. By the end of winter in this period, according to John Higgs’s The Land (1964), every blade of grass had been eaten and the animals were forced to follow the plough looking for upturned roots.The social structure of the country had changed, the population had grown, the ...”

“... the postwar boom in the OECD zone by Anglo-American economists of the Left – Andrew Glyn, David Gordon and others – and totalised a phase of world history under it. The notion, as always and as he himself concedes, is a retrospective one: treasure discovered after the event. It is amid the rubble of the Landslide that what preceded it appear ingots. The ...”