“... Not long after the 1992 election – at around the time the Tories’ fate was sealed by Norman Lamont and Black Wednesday – Andersen Consulting offered its services free to the Labour Party’s Commission on Social Justice, set up by the Labour leader John Smith. The Commission was chaired by Sir Gordon Borrie, former Director General of Fair ...”

“... his liberal sympathies and a tendency to blurt out information about church assets. But he slowly rose through the ranks to become precentor, and spent his dotage working on the cathedral’s medieval manuscripts.In the course of his research, Bannister struck up a correspondence with Montague Rhodes James. Though he is now more famous for his ghost ...”

“... stronger criticisms of the war crimes tribunals than the laxity of procedure which so enraged Norman Birkett, the alternate British judge on the Nuremberg court. The composition of the tribunals had no semblance of impartiality: every judge was a national of one of the victorious Allies. The dissent of the Indian judge at Tokyo, Justice Radhabinod ...”

“... to serious non-fiction, from the days of André Maurois’s romanticised version of Shelley to Norman Mailer’s pastiche of Marilyn Monroe, have seemed more dubious. With Peterley Harvest there was an additional problem because, unlike recent fictional diaries such as Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg 1933-1948, or fictional ...”

“... Paul Ferdonnet and André Olbrecht, who recorded programmes in Stuttgart; in the States, ‘Tokyo Rose’, Mildred Gillars (‘Axis Sally’) and Ezra Pound, who was indicted for broadcasting from Italy; in Britain, John Amery and P.G. Wodehouse, who was cold-shouldered for giving a jaunty talk about life in his internment camp. Lord Haw-Haw was the most ...”

“... Moynihan announced in the New York Times, ‘Jewish writers – Bernard Malamud, J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, inter alia – have emerged as a dominant movement in our literature. Herzog, in several senses, is the great pay-off book of that movement. It is a masterpiece, the first the movement has produced.’ Herzog not only had critics ...”

“... again. In the courtroom, eerily, Lisa’s image returned. Behind Acting Justice Harold Rothwax rose a huge painting of a woman in flowing, pinkish robes – a figure of Justice perhaps – with two girls, identically dressed, in motion on the stairs below her. One of them dances just over the judge’s elbow throughout the televised proceedings. She is a ...”

“... speaking the poems in Gaelic. I was lucky to be on the stage of the Abbey Theatre when Sorley and Norman MacCaig came to Dublin to read at the launching of their excellent poetry records: my job was to read some of the translations (this time by Sorley MacLean), but my interest was in hearing the Gaelic. Again, this had the force of revelation: the ...”

“... of the Spanish monarchy declined (despite his efforts, or even because of them), while France rose. The ‘planet king’, Philip IV, was eclipsed by the sun of Louis XIV. History, or the historian at any rate, has little patience with failure. The second reason for the neglect of Olivares is the loss of most of his papers, those notorious papers which he ...”

“... like Major. (There are photos of his father, Tom, looking like a cross between George Formby and Norman Wisdom, in the book.) What his parents did bequeath him, however, was a consuming interest in popular entertainment, which this lucid, erudite study distils to excellent effect. An impressive amount of research underpins the volume, though Major conceals ...”

“... of pleasure? Is our awareness of pain more like listening, or hearing? When you imagine a red rose, how do you know it’s really red, and why might we think that blue is closer to green than red? ‘Say what you really think,’ he told his students, and ‘don’t try to be intelligent.’ The classes often ‘felt like the day of judgment’, as one ...”

“... whimsical, and has a romance’. He cites some of the familiar elements – the countryside, the rose, the sense of humour. He praises the yeomanly characteristics of some Brexit-voting English regions (‘remote and stubborn’ Cornwall, ‘proud and defiant’ Kent’) and notes the Shakespearean resonances of many others (from York to Lancaster, from ...”

“... anointed themselves with blessed water from the Stanley Park Fountain. Positive-thinking preachers Norman Vincent Peale and Charles B. Roth spoke regularly at Tupperware Homecoming Jubilees. It may be, as one sociological study speculates, that a general trend in the US towards evangelical religion subsequently moved Tupperware Home Parties further in that ...”

“... unknown to the cartographers of Islam, a Saxon king who defeated a king of Norway is defeated by a Norman duke.’ Khayyám’s work on cubic equations remains fundamental. It seems it was a sideline, versifying. Composing quatrains was a cultured pastime, just as the Heian Japanese a century or so before amused themselves in idle moments by writing blazons to ...”

“... No one talking about anything else. The Speaker gave a right bollocking to Kate Hoey and Norman Baker for allegedly colluding with our oppressors in the media. A good five minutes’ worth. I’ve never seen him so worked up. Actually, it was way over the top. Gave the impression he is rattled, which I imagine he is.  Then to a jam-packed meeting ...”