“... 1980s responding ineffectively to growing tabloid contempt until, in 1989, Douglas Hurd set up a Home Office committee under David Calcutt QC to consider measures (including legislative measures) to protect individual privacy against the press. Calcutt was given a year to report, and it was while his committee was at work that David Mellor, then a junior ...”

“... should, as his duty, commit disembowelment to register his righteous protest when he judged his lord was committing a grave error but would not listen to his urgent advice. To be allowed to pay for one’s sin or mistake by seppuku was an honour reserved for the privileged class, the mercy of a samurai to another samurai. A scene of seppuku on a Kabuki ...”

“... tuned their sets to 213 metres on the medium wave (a little higher than the frequency of the BBC Home Service) were in for a shock. ‘Have you ever seen Beaverbrook?’ asked one of the announcers, referring to the current Minister for Aircraft Production. ‘Well, we often have in meeting halls, and what we could never understand was, why he was on the ...”

“... course of handcuffing the ‘Hetling’ artist, the police having finally tracked him down at his home in Cornwall: ‘We didn’t get Keating. We’re going to fucking get you.’ While investigating the case in London, the Cornish police visited galleries, dealers and ‘known associates’ of the suspects, including an antique-dealer friend of mine. He ...”

“... nor does he bring them to life. That AD 490 story of ‘teyrn’ and ‘taeog’ (roughly, ‘lord and tribute’ or ‘landlord and rent’) is an underdog’s complaint against a Romano-British tyrant, Artorius, whom Williams seems to identify with the original King Arthur. There is an incursion of the Vikings, the ‘black gentiles’, in AD 896: they ...”

“... youths bore the caption: ‘I’m a paediatrician.’ That same week, a woman was besieged in her home by a group of youths who daubed the word ‘Paedo’ on her wall. She was of course a paediatrician. Whichever way we turn, we see populist measures outlined or tabled by politicians, populist judgments delivered in the courts, and unthinking, vengeful ...”

“... dollars in the close season. Practised as a writer, or at least as a musical journalist, Lord Harewood has produced an autobiography which not only confines itself to matters of genuine interest, both public and human, but is so singularly sensitive to people’s feelings that, in the end, it poses a psychological problem: where did his aggression ...”

“... modernise using replicas made with imported moulds. Think of Tony Blair abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor by press release in 2003. The Lord Chancellor’s department was immediately reformed and replaced by a Department for Constitutional Affairs, which lasted only until 2007, when it morphed into a ...”

“... assassin was Italian, and Parry’s car had Italian plates. He and his assistants – Albert Lord, who had recently graduated from Harvard, and Nikola Vujnović, a young Bosnian stonemason and singer – set off for Dubrovnik as fast as they could. Police officers escorted them through Sarajevo. They kept their heads down for a few weeks, but resumed ...”

“... made me turn later to Buchan’s Life of Cromwell to refresh my memory of the character of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who, like Greene, had friends in both political camps. Turning idly to the seemingly unpromising character of Cromwell himself, I could not help being struck by the aptness to Greene of phrase after phrase in Buchan’s final appraisal of the ...”

“... Board, had yet to reach his apotheosis with the life peerage that validated his sobriquet, Lord Toad of Tote Hall. Confidant of Margaret Thatcher, columnist in the News of the World, professional diner-out and social climber, Wyatt spotted his opportunity. His diary would be a secret but was, from the outset, intended for publication. Its rationale was ...”

“... room too small for the many office chairs in it, he’s already eaten the pasta he brought from home at his desk. Tucked behind his ear is a rollie with a neat twist at the tip, and he takes it down to turn it over in his hands as he talks; normally he’d smoke through his lunch hour. He’s wearing long jean shorts and a Homer Simpson T-shirt; his eyes ...”

“... photograph, surrounded by appropriate symbols or even original relics of Spitfires, Sten guns, Home Guard pikes and Montecristo cigars, listening to quadrophonic recordings of the major speeches in His own voice, peering into side-chapels dedicated to His companions (Beaverbrook, Birkenhead, Bracken), the average gent thrown into despair by the latest ...”

“... said – when much has been discounted – it would seem only natural that, given developments at home and the pattern of distribution through the fleets, the Irish dimension, while not decisive, should not be ignored.’ As a rule, however, his reluctance to criticise or condemn adds verisimilitude to his book. Ehrman has discovered what happened, and he ...”

“... person’s prosperity, plainly. The case which set the tone in Britain, in 1848, involved the then lord chancellor, Lord Cottenham. Cottenham turned out to hold shares in the canal company in whose favour he had decided a case brought by a litigious solicitor named Dimes, who had bought a piece of land in order to hold the ...”