“... start of the campaign are invariably closer to the final result than the ones taken at the end. So it’s not that people don’t change their minds. They change their minds twice: once in response to the excitement of the campaign, and once in the privacy of the polling booth. That was clearly what happened this time ...”

“... true identity might best be represented as a series of fictional impostures. Irene von Treskow’s cover illustration confirmed the sense of life as performance: ‘Manley’, disguised in the black robes of a duenna, peeps, half-veiled and half-barefaced, from behind her fan. In her autobiographical Narrative (1755) Charlotte Charke similarly describes ...”

“... On 16 October 1859, a white anti-slavery agitator called John Brown led 21 followers in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. A previous expedition against a Kansas slave-owning settlement had ended in five deaths, but Brown had far grander hopes for his new enterprise – to start an insurrection across the South ...”

“... claustrophobic worldview formed fifty years before in Presbyterian Dundee. Where the Observer’s wider and obviously more up-to-date perspective came from I had no idea; the kind of smart remark that said it was a paper ‘written by Central European Jews for Central African blacks’ would have flown straight over my head. I didn’t know that it had ...”

“... Some professions​ attract people suffering from extreme forms of narcissism (or as it’s sometimes called, narcissistic personality disorder). Politics is one; sport is another. A recent political example is Kevin Rudd, the two-time Australian prime minister, a man with a toxic personality and enormous political gifts ...”

“... sleeps. What do they smell like? Like honey, steeping the sunshine. What do they look like? Like a brown and purple cloud-shadow spread out across the uplands, described by William Atkins in characteristically fine focus when he says of the North Yorkshire moors that ‘the new blooms were silverish specks; they were pale grey, beige and mint green. I picked a ...”

“... and feathers spattered down around my feet. Guillemot egg patterns To come upon a bird’s egg is to be close to a natural wonder, even if Birkhead is perhaps a shade too purple in saying that eggs ‘have an erotic aura all of their own’. My own sightings of eggs have been infrequent (collecting the eggs of Khaki Campbell ducks from among the ...”

“... their skin scored by his nails. Nearby, frogs are raping women and lizards are biting at people’s thighs. As Dante was being baptised here seven hundred and forty years ago, his baby eyes might have tried to focus on this scene. Ghastly nightmares, diseased fantasies ... Never mind, reassurance is at hand. A yard or two away sits Christ the Judge. The ...”

“... and 1995, it housed the major courts for the surrounding region. From 1912, access to the world’s first official police forensic laboratory was gained by entering through a back door and climbing three flights of creaking stairs to the attic. Edmond Locard, who founded the laboratory, is credited with the idea that ‘every contact leaves a trace’ (modern ...”

“... Gordon Burn’s work takes place at a point where fact and fiction, public events and private lives, fame and death all meet. He began his career as a proponent of the non-fiction novel pioneered by Truman Capote and Norman Mailer; his first book, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (1984), was a painstaking re-creation of the life of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper ...”

“... Parliament”, insert “not”.’ Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament, Labour’s number of seats has dropped in every single election. In May it won just 17 out of 129, tied with Reform in a distant second place after the SNP, which has 58 seats and is about to enter its third decade in government. A chunk of Harris’...”

“... exclusively in terms of menace. Which would the voters be more frightened of – loony Labour’s threat to Britain’s defence and personal prosperity or the hard-faced Conservatives’ dismemberment of health, education and welfare? ‘I wants to make your flesh creep,’ said the fat boy, and that is what the parties ...”

“... the Border hills near Beattock on the way to South Uist and Barra. At Oban I’ll rendezvous with David Paterson, a landscape photographer, who’s working with me on a book on the Highland Clearances. As I overtake a worn blue Audi estate, I look sideways and see Dave’s face and ...”

“... Since In Cold Blood, murderers have been a staple of the non-fiction novel, from Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song to Gordon Burn’s horribly fascinating books about Peter Sutcliffe and Fred and Rosemary West. Andrew Hankinson’s new book ...”

“... from outside Parliament, continuing the practice of his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, who appointed David Cameron as foreign secretary last November, making him a peer in order to do so. Many find the practice of making outside appointments constitutionally suspect. However, the constitutional issue that requires ...”