“... will burrow down as deep and as fast as Ada and Phyllis can carry them. ‘We should leave no stone unturned or unfracked,’ Boris Johnson said, ‘in the cause of keeping the lights on in London.’ The mania​ for boreholes reminded me of a cautionary tale by Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘When the World Screamed’. Doyle’s crazed superman ...”

“... to the margins’. There, pockets of Whig resistance no doubt remain – readers of Lawrence Stone’s correspondence with Russell in the TLS not so long ago might be surprised to learn the field had become so pacific. Yet even Stone has conceded the second part of the victory the revisionists claim. For he, too, has ...”

“... 1991, Bob was admitted to hospital with almost no normal lung tissue left. ‘He weighed just five stone,’ Sue said, ‘and died the kind of death you would not wish on a rabid dog.’ On his last day, Bob asked her if everything was ‘sorted’ financially: ‘I lied and told him we’d be fine, and a few minutes later he died.’ Sue couldn’t face going ...”

“... Philippa Foot in the 1980s! Could things be as bad as all that? ‘Probably not,’ someone called Brian replied.To suggest that a culture of sexism might be disproved by the presence of a few women who are granted exceptional status is, among other things, to show an ignorance of the discipline’s history. (Wittgenstein, Anscombe’s beloved teacher, was ...”

“... reopenarbeit macht freii want a haircutIn the ten days after the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, reopens gyms, spas, hair salons, tattoo parlours and other essential services, confirmed coronavirus cases in the state rise by 42 per cent.Ohio representative Nino Vitale explains why he is opposed to face masks: ‘We’re created in the image and ...”

“... he could be counted, by the mid-Eighties, among the select group of academics – Hugh Thomas, Brian Crozier, Norman Stone, Leonard Schapiro and others – lending extra-mural advice and assistance to Mrs Thatcher. Urban’s refreshingly forthright memoir, Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher, also ...”

“... has often involved them in liaising between the Loyalist paramilitary UDA, the RUC and the Army. Brian Nelson, a former soldier who became chief of intelligence in the UDA and a British Army double agent, is said to have passed on to his Army handlers the information that the UDA was intending to kill Finucane. RUC sources say this was indeed the case, but ...”

“... Polmont.On​ 8 January 2024, a bank of photographers greeted the Allans as they climbed the stone steps of Falkirk Sheriff Court for the start of the inquiry. In William’s case, the timeline and mistakes made were clear. William had been sent to Polmont with two documents: his prison escort record, which said that, as a suicide risk, he had been ...”

“... Steiner, there was a time in the early Seventies when some friends and their families, including Brian Wenham, Derrick Amoore and Francis Hope (all dead before their time), used to rent a villa on the Mediterranean every summer. One year they were most excited to learn that Steiner was due to rent the villa next door. All of them, particularly Francis, were ...”

“... Venetians were motivated by cash rewards to slip the names of bribe-takers into the mouth of a stone lion located (for privacy) behind St Mark’s Cathedral. And, like Venice, a major source of economic strength lies not in Hong Kong’s limited area, or even in its diligent people, but in its role at the hub of a commercial empire – which, in Hong ...”

“... White Duke’. This dubious pseudonymous character was first aired in an interview with Rolling Stone’s bumptious but canny young reporter Cameron Crowe; it soon became notorious. Crowe’s scene-setting picture of Bowie at home featured black candles and doodled ballpoint stars meant to ward off evil influences. Bowie revealed an enthusiasm for Aleister ...”

“... you thought of me when I was a kid?’ ‘Nice,’ said Mr Simpson, rocking. ‘A quiet boy.’ Brian Simpson’s sister looks after him. She brought us tea and a plastic tub of biscuits. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘I remember’ – and his hands beat a semaphore, as if guiding the words into the room – ‘that Anthony would walk up at the end of the ...”

“... out of the question’, as Grimm writes, there is no recourse against them. They are set not in stone, but in granite, and are far from neutral in effect. Written in ‘a technical language that is often opaque’, the court’s decisions often cloak highly political issues in an apolitical fashion; they fall ‘below the threshold of public ...”