“... Frederick the Great, Beyond Soap and Water, as his Nietzschean son was beyond Good and Evil.’ Harry Furniss wrote that ‘Lady Wilde, had she been cleaned up and plainly and rationally dressed, would have made a remarkably fine model of the Grand Dame, but with all her paint and tinsel and tawdry tragedy-queen get-up she was a walking burlesque of ...”

“... As a proportion of GDP Russia’s military spending is the third highest in the world: you expect smart bombs and fifth-generation fighters, drone operators and surgical strikes. Instead Ukrainian forces broadcast images of ageing Soviet-era attack helicopters – the Mi-24 entered service in 1972 – crashing in farmers’ fields, brought down by a single ...”

“... Children’s Services manager, you’d be hoping they’d send you a person exactly like her, a smart, Guardian-reading liberal. She is unsentimental about England’s social problems and has spent a lot of time engaging with them. She has a CBE for her work helping children and their families in London and is unsparing in her criticism of central ...”