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“... Quarantine and Inspection Service has found bedbugs at airports in woven cane baskets and woven straw bags – as well as on roses from Kenya, in baggage from Europe, and on an airport inspection bench. So it is clear that bedbugs can hitch-hike long distances and ride about town. But how good they are at very local travel remains undetermined. Urban myths ...”

“... as the antidote: Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood, And Sabra in the forest with St George! The move from wonder to instruction might seem an inevitable consequence of the move from oral to literary tales. But even a highly literate tale like Alice in Wonderland cannot be ...”

“... the phrase is frequently used without proper definition, Hexter too easily knocks down his men of straw. Some historians argued that ‘the middle class’ ruled England in the 16th century; others argued that ‘the middle class’ came to power in the 17th century. Both statements cannot be true, but it does not therefore follow that both are false. The ...”

“... conditions, you might think, that every architect faces on any public commission. The final straw at Cambridge was an unforeseen planning problem. A last-minute hitch in the acquisition of a neighbouring property meant that a building designed to expose its glazed elevations to the northeast had to be swivelled 90 degrees to face south-east. Stirling ...”

“... Unless my gaoler picks the longest of a thousand straws, I shall be shot. If my gaoler picks that straw, there would be something to be explained. It would not be enough to say, ‘This result was as likely as any other.’ In the first lottery, nothing special happened: whatever the result, someone’s life would be saved. In this second lottery, the result ...”

“... They would not, as Englishmen, have to face one another. Jeremiah Bembo, who ghosts as Solomon Straw, public executioner, state functionary, initiates us in the mysteries of his craft. As is traditional, he sketches his childhood, family background, picaresque beginnings. Nothing random, nothing wasted. Every anecdote fits into the cumulative ...”

“... but the following Wednesday he turned up in a Baltimore tavern, nearly comatose and wearing a straw hat and ill-fitting clothes, sans waistcoat and neckcloth. He was taken to a local hospital, and spent the next day in a delirium. The resident physician noted his ‘constant talking – and vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the ...”

“... the characters who say or imagine them. There are a suspicious number of these characters around. Jack in Before She Met Me and Oliver in the adultery-in-Stoke-Newington books exist largely as outlets for hyper-eloquent humour, and their annoyingness is only partly alleviated by the fact that everyone else in the novels seems to find them pretty ...”

“... Once back on the road we were caught behind a lorry that was swaying badly and looked in danger of jack-knifing. As we pulled closer to overtake, there was a strong smell of petrol. Diesel was pouring out of a tank under the cab, slicking one set of wheels with fuel and causing the vehicle to slide. The driver powered on, leaving the trailer swaying behind ...”

“... impertinent biographers through the courts (like J.D. Salinger). They will (like T.S. Eliot or Jack London) set up vigilant estates to stand like pyramids over the author’s reputation and defy any tomb-robbing researcher. They will themselves incinerate mountains of correspondence (as did Dickens) or enjoin survivors to do it for them (like Auden). They ...”

“... and British (if not also American) governments was made clear when it was echoed word for word by Jack Straw in the House of Commons. The formula allowed the government to give the public the impression that Libya was indeed guilty, while also allowing Tripoli to say that it had admitted nothing of the kind. The statement does not even mention al-Megrahi ...”

“... was four thousand. The other source of employment, already in decline, was the local craft of straw plaiting.Family life operated laterally across networks of aunts and cousins. An evocative passage in Landemare’s memoir describes a six-mile walk from Aston Clinton to Aldbury with her mother and two younger siblings to visit her maternal ...”

“... and Chuter Ede, the current Home Secretary. I was told, even as Pol was being shoehorned into Jack’s boots: you know how it is, our people have to talk to their people; what if our political editor has to shmooze with Jack after he’s choked on the Himmler gibe that same morning? Having naively believed that ...”

“... of mutton and potatoes under it’ on which the company is feasting in The Pickwick Papers while Jack Hopkins tells the story of the child who swallowed a necklace. Dickens couldn’t stop sensing. ‘His imagination overwhelms everything,’ Orwell concluded, ‘like a kind of weed.’ But it isn’t enough to notice him noticing. Dickens did a great deal ...”

“... the strategy of ‘control without occupation’ in Iraq, which entailed sprinkling fire on straw-roofed huts: ‘within forty-five minutes,’ Harris reported, ‘a full-sized village … can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or five machines which offer them no real target.’ Although bombing didn’t ...”