“... Avons and Devonshires’: ‘there was a great uproar and lots of four-letter words; Debo said to Roy Jenkins: “Can’t you stop them by saying something Labour?” ’ – ‘but this,’ she says to Waugh, ‘is something Roy has never been able to do.’ There’s an interest, of course, in all this tribal ...”

“... to add to them would be the unearthing of new evidence or a radically different interpretation. Roy Jenkins says he is not ‘a great partisan of the “revelatory” biography’, and claims that for Churchill nearly all the ‘facts’ are known in any case. One of Best’s motives for writing his book is to scotch some of the wilder recent ...”

“... at least in the minds of its signatories, for five days before the rebellion was crushed. Yet as Roy Foster implies, the founding of a republic was not as clear-cut a goal for the precursors of the men of 1916, or even for the men, and women, of the War of Independence that broke out in 1919, as later nationalist piety would insist. It is startling to ...”

“... the play has tended to muffle its strangeness. It is the great achievement of the second volume of Roy Foster’s superb biography that it delivers us late Yeats in all his troublesome immediacy. Foster does this not just by cutting across the record with new facts from the archive – itself a considerable feat, given that half a dozen biographers have ...”

“... words – evoked the pity and fear which British viewers felt during the Moon landing, quite as strong as our sense of jubilation, of ‘a giant step for mankind’. Further, as Peter and Leni Gillman suggest (prosaically or poetically), ‘Space Oddity’ sounds like an experience of shooting heroin, and they sternly quote another Bowie lyric: Ashes to ...”

“... younger brothers), the reckless and inexplicable cross-country train journey to join improvident Roy McCarthy’s parents in Minneapolis, the deaths of Roy and of McCarthy’s mother Tess within a day of each other on arrival. The children aren’t told, but they work it out for themselves some time before they are set up ...”

“... again she proceeds by way of heedless exaggeration. Prague before 1920 was certainly a city of strong, occasionally violent national antagonisms, and the discontent the Czechs felt about their status under Hapsburg rule did at times take the form of anti-semitic demonstrations. Of the two historical sources Mme Robert relies on, one (C. Stölzl’s Kafkas ...”

“... The sudden death of Roy Jenkins took us all by surprise. He was over eighty, of course, and with a heart problem that had required major surgery. This latterly gave him a good excuse to sit down at receptions: all the better to conduct vigorous conversational campaigns while maintaining eye-contact, not least, at suitable intervals, with the wine waiter ...”

“... down precisely what it was they disliked about him. Looking back on the factionalism of the 1950s Roy Jenkins recalled that ‘one of the basic tenets of Gaitskellism was that Wilson was a tricky fellow.’ The Gaitskellites’ leading theorist, Anthony Crosland, struggling to convince a journalist of Wilson’s shortcomings, was reduced to ...”

“... blame the Civil Service. No peevish scapegoatism here. Exposure to international reality had a strong educative effect on Bevin (it would have been alarming if it had not). But his policies bore the stamp of his personality. There was no sense of a man abandoning his own ideals, or being sucked under by the dictates of expediency. He sought to give a ...”

“... social engineering projects, which take various forms: in Kashmir, assimilation (as Arundhati Roy has pointed out, the prospect of Israel-style settlement building in Kashmir is not unrealistic); in Assam, the disenfranchisement, and possible internment, of a vast number of soon to be stateless people. Modi’s brand of national consolidation – or, to ...”

“... was efficient and didn’t mind hard work. She was helpful. When the two men who ran the press, Roy Trevelion and Tenebris Light, went on holiday to Gran Canaria, she willingly redecorated their flat. Editorial routines didn’t need to be solemn: on one occasion she and Roy sifted poetry submissions by reading them aloud ...”

“... that ‘the revolution of 1688 was perhaps precipitated by Bath,’ but the evidence is not over-strong. Bath certainly befriended James II and his Queen, supporting him up to a late stage. At the showdown, eminent Bath citizens fell from grace, but the city welcomed the coronation of William III with suitable gusto. A hundred years on, and patriotic Bath ...”

“... the Lucan and Goldsmith stories, because he wrote the libel in Private Eye. The same detective, Roy Ranson, investigated the Lucan affair and the case of Wilson’s missing tax papers – which coincided with the MI5 campaign against him. To more than one of a number of matters we can apply Marnham’s words: ‘Time and again a blow intended for one head ...”

“... by Muhammad Dahlan, whom many Palestinians suspected – rightly – was being groomed as the ‘strong man’ who would eventually assume the presidency and restore Fatah to power. The ultimate aim was to build a Fatah militia around Dahlan that could confront Hamas militarily – and win. American officials hoped in the meantime to place Fatah in a ...”