“... looking for cattle. In 1928, Dame Sibyl inaugurated a land sports day: the highlight was the chase after a greased pig. Nowadays, the dog and pet show offers prizes not just for best pedigree and best cross-breed, but for the most unsocial pet, the waggiest tail, and owners’ proficiency with egg and spoon. At the Sark Sheep Races, which celebrated ...”

“... who suspected he was a runaway and tried to enlist him as one of his own slaves. There was a chase and a scuffle in which Anderson inflicted knife wounds from which Digges died two weeks later. Anderson meanwhile made it across the Canadian border to Windsor, where he established a new life. Not until March 1860 was he recognised as Digges’s fugitive ...”

“... up a lynch mob against Hypatia, but in an apocryphal letter only. I was embarked on a paper chase in a strong breeze and so far, the trail has scattered. It reveals something about the autonomy of stories as artefacts and the delta of literature they course through that I couldn’t find an origin. Like Hamlet, Frankenstein’s creature or Jane ...”

“... had to ask an aide: ‘Can you please tell me, what can two women possibly do?’ Senator Margaret Chase Smith asked one Hoey Committee witness whether there wasn’t a ‘quick test like an X-ray that discloses these things’. The official justification for the purge was that homosexuals were vulnerable to blackmail and could be turned into Soviet spies. But ...”

“... as wide as 16 points. Corbyn is the most unpopular opposition leader on record, polling worse than Michael Foot, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and Ed Miliband, all of whom went on to lose general elections by significant margins, or did not get to contest them. There are 230 Labour MPs; on 28 June, 172 of ...”

“... step pointed criticisms of the Jacobean regime. Greville hits at ‘effeminate princes’ who chase ‘idle, I fear deceiving, shadows of peace’; at the ‘monopolous use of favourites’ and the subordination of public to private interest in a court which has become a ‘farm’; at the decline of the Privy Council and of Naval administration; and ...”

“... as a US citizen was specially arranged to suit his sense of its importance, presided over by Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush’s appointee as head of the Department of Homeland Security, and conducted on Jefferson’s birthday at the Jefferson Memorial. ‘There was a very stiff breeze blowing across the Tidal Basin,’ Hitchens recalls, ‘but it ...”

“... drink’; signing up for ‘car ride’ to visit the ‘ice cream’ shop; or signing off with ‘chase, tickle’ when playing with a pair of – ‘gorilla dolls’. Answering the question, after a local earthquake, ‘What happened?’, one gorilla ventures: ‘Darn darn floor bad bite. Trouble trouble.’ This is speaking, and sign languages are fully ...”

“... the Soviet Union as a foreigner and not become obsessed with spying. (If anyone doubts this, read Michael Frayn’s wonderful novel The Russian Interpreter, published the year I first went to Moscow.) ‘Do you think X is a spy?’ we were always asking each other about new Russian acquaintances, and sometimes about each other. It was a question that went the ...”

“... at the right time.) Or, as Steegmuller alone does, in his unannotated version, you can cut to the chase and write: ‘The verger was just then standing in the left doorway, under the figure of the dancing Salome.’ This is instantly comprehensible, and has the additional virtue of pointing up this image of lasciviousness beneath which Léon passes on his way ...”

“... political theme, sees the writer as doing a ‘particularly brilliant thing’ in Amphitryon; and Michael Cordner three times reiterates the word ‘masterpiece’ when introducing his edition of the play. There is an appealing American proverb, ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ It seems to throw light on the difficult case of Dryden. During ...”

“... aliens is no longer confined to a costly cat and mouse game along the frontier. It is a grim paper-chase that takes place in traffic queues and metered parking zones in Phoenix, the kitchens of fast-food restaurants, mechanics’ workshops and building sites miles from the fence. Oscar, a fluent English speaker in his thirties, was not the symbolic serial ...”

“... of female sexual perversion is the overlay on a savage critique of normal male sexuality. In Michael Haneke’s film of the novel a cool symmetry prevails: no sides are taken. But the book leaves us in no doubt that what Klemmer does to Erika is of a different order of harm from what she does to him. Erika’s weapon is ‘not doing’, keeping the sex ...”

“... filming in Ilkley. Nothing untoward occurred until the evening, when I was taken out to supper by Michael Palin and Maggie Smith. Came my salad of mixed leaves and there, nestling among the rocket, were several shards of broken glass. ‘Very mixed,’ said Miss Smith. ‘No,’ said the waiter. ‘It’s a mistake.’ I reached the 1990s without ...”

“... in the air, the latest Bond epic, The World Is Not Enough, would include a ‘high-speed boat chase’ along the Thames to the Dome. ‘Gorgeous Maria Grazia Cucinotta’ (a.k.a. Cigar Girl) would feature in a product placement orgy, pursued by every means of transport (including the air-balloons that are already drifting across the skyline), to a ...”