“... Mythology of the Secret Societies (1972) illuminated much, but not the movement’s origins. Now David Stevenson can claim to have clarified these considerably, in a work of creative scholarship flavoured by exceptional candour and gusto. His subtitle gives his gist. In the 17th century, such characteristic features of Freemasonry as the local Lodge ...”

“... report by another pilot, both of whom saw the UFO that day too. In the interview the pilot, David Fravor, explains that he was out on a routine training exercise when he was told that the exercise had been suspended, that he was being sent on a real mission instead, and that he was to fly to a point thirty miles west. When Fravor arrived at the location ...”

“... British counterparts, which could look to the latter much like indolence. Life as a small tenant farmer involved sporadic bursts of labour but a fair bit of leisure, too, and the Irish were fond of their fairs and feast-days. You could turn the muscles involved in planting potatoes to digging canals, but there seemed no point in overdoing it. How well you ...”

“... has traditionally disliked spending money. Politics has always been dominated by a tenant farmer mentality hostile to taxes and state intrusion. Dame Sibyl, Sark’s greatest publicist, married an American and made several tours of the US, giving her radio audiences the impression that Sark was a feudal state over which she reigned supreme. This has ...”

“... might have issued from Christ’s breast.The consummation imagined here is tellingly related in David Kennedy’s astute essay on Prince’s ‘Portrayal of National Bodies’ to a notebook entry the poet made in 1950, which details a bored church elder haunted by a ‘dream of naked man, opening his arms, receiving love and death upon his bare ...”

“... with flame-throwers – or, in the more palatable scenario of crop-substitution, to pay off the farmer to grow cabbages or pineapples instead. The problem is all the places you can’t walk into. The Burmese poppy crop is controlled by powerful para-military armies like the Shan United Army and the Kuomintang. The bulk of South American coca is grown not by ...”

“... Phillips loved to talk and tell stories, which form the basis of the book. His father, a tenant farmer, was, Phillips told Guralnick, ‘the greatest sculptor of the soil I’ve ever seen … The way he was with people, the way he was with animals, the kindness he showed to others, the expectations he had of himself … He knew the soil. He knew mules. I ...”

“... to play fifty years ago) were also billed, alongside veterans from the founding festival: Santana, David Crosby, Country Joe McDonald, the remains of the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat and others. But Lang’s fifty-up began to unravel when his top-dog investor, the Japanese digicoms company Dentsu Aegis, announced from its London HQ that it was pulling ...”

“... Even mainstream liberal opinion aligned against the Rides. The respected TV journalist David Brinkley commented on the NBC evening news that the Freedom Riders ‘are accomplishing nothing whatsoever and, on the contrary, doing positive harm’. Public opinion surveys showed that most whites – North and South – viewed them negatively. In a ...”

“... man called Gary Gardner began to wonder about the case. He was a retired – bankrupt, in fact – farmer, cropduster and descendant of pioneers and railroaders; bowlegged, corpulent, straw-hatted and outspoken, he had acquired a reputation in the Tulia area as an eccentric and enthusiastic troublemaker after suing the Tulia school district over its new ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Women Writing about Money (1995) gets more thoroughly into the topic than a biographer can, and David Nokes provides even more insights than Tomalin into (say) Austen and legacy-hunting. In fact Tomalin’s considerable strengths are surely of another kind – to do with her modern, matter-of-fact tone of voice and her narrowed focus on Jane Austen as the ...”

“... as a goitre prophylaxis was proposed again in 1898, 1909 and 1912. In 1911, the US researcher David Marine announced that he had used iodine to prevent goitre in freshwater trout, though he stopped short of endorsing an iodine deficiency theory. He thought the element probably counteracted another, goitre-creating agent, much as quinine acts on the ...”

“... in 1932. Eight years later Garner went back to Texas a bitter man, to eke out his days as a pecan farmer; the vice-presidency had broken him. (It was Garner who compared the office to a pitcher of piss.) Rayburn thought Johnson would be making the same mistake, but Kennedy and Johnson between them talked him round. We know Johnson was serious because he asked ...”

“... capital. I always found him among the most entertaining and delightful of companions. But a farmer’s son? It’s hard to imagine anything more incongruous. I’m always fascinated by the succession of fortuities that determine the lives and careers of major artists and how easily their achievements might never have happened. Ashbery’s parents were ...”