“... well down his list of priorities. ‘I don’t care about copyright law,’ he told his friend Peter Eckersley in 2010. ‘Healthcare, financial reform – those are the issues that I work on, not something obscure like copyright law.’ He had a change of heart about freedom of information more generally: he’d started to notice that the government and ...”

“... drugs out of his list of rivulets because, I’d guess, he was above them. In close-up he has a white-bearded hawk of a face, with the clear eyes of a fighter pilot. He made me think of James Salter and his code of taciturn manliness.But then you meet another witness who explains the big gap between ordering the death of your enemy from 15,000 feet and ...”

“... found ways to mark the city as their own. Nicholas fortified the Borgo, the area around Saint Peter’s Basilica, and rebuilt the Trevi fountain, part of an ancient system that still brought water into the city (one of the tasks, and one of the marks, of authority in Rome). Julius planned to drive a long, straight road, the Via Giulia, through the heart ...”

“... even festive. By way of a prank, it seems, the ghost leaves a kettle lid perched like a beret on a white china cat (the domestic clutter on mantelpieces and sideboards is ideal territory for a poltergeist). Evans sends out for cakes and buys new glasses for the spirit to destroy. Fodor is an amiable presence, cracking jokes as he makes copious ...”

“... caution and sometimes undermining her. In the wake of his trial, his camp – mostly middle-aged white men impatient for a second referendum – have pitted themselves against Sturgeon and her backers, whom they dismiss as ‘the wokerati’.The committee appointed by the Scottish Parliament to inquire into the Scottish government’s mishandling of its ...”

“... as first minister. The independence movement has splintered; the party is mired in scandal. Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband and the SNP’s former chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement, while Sturgeon’s replacement as party leader, Humza Yousaf, had to resign after ill-advisedly cancelling the party’s co-operation agreement with ...”

“... the support of the queen,’ Lownie writes, ‘and the endorsement of the former trade secretary Peter Mandelson.’ Andrew was a walking category error, perceiving no difference between business and pleasure, between what was good for the country and what was excellent for him, conducting a campaign of international larceny masquerading as public ...”

“... playing a kind of burlesque version of themselves. These are men like the braggadocio Peter Shakerly; the railer Charles Chester, who was the model for Carlo Buffone in Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour; Humfrey King, the poetic tobacconist; the barber-surgeons Tom Tooley and Richard Lichfield; the tavern joker John Stone. These loquacious ...”

“... knowing even the most elementary facts about the intelligence services their taxes pay for. The Peter Wright trial in Australia has recently brought out the full absurdity of this, with Sir Robert Armstrong attempting at one point to suggest that the very existence of MI5 and MI6 (let alone the identity of their directors) was a secret which could neither ...”

“... timid. They resemble nothing so much as nervous Victorian dabblings with Mr Sludge the medium. A white-coated psychologist was in attendance. Huxley’s main contention is that ‘religion and alcohol do not and cannot mix.’ Mescalin is ‘much more compatible’. Thousands of eager ‘experimenters’ subsequently took their trip through the magic ...”

“... force a President from office and which has pushed candidates out of the present campaign for the White House. That kind of press arouses resentment: hardly a surprise. ‘The press is the enemy,’ President Nixon instructed his staff. Politicians less prickly than he have felt victimised by the press. And resentment does not come only from the ...”

“... bells had not been evacuated from St Catherine, St John, St Brigit, Saints Barbara, Elizabeth, Peter and Paul, from Trinity to Corpus Christi, melted in their belfries and dripped away without pomp or ceremony. In the Big Mill red wheat was milled. Butcher Street smelled of burnt Sunday roast. The Municipal Theatre was giving a premiere, a one-act play ...”

“... of a message delivered by Nestor. In the dream Agamemnon is told that Troy is about to fall. In Peter Green’s translation:But now listen well: I bring word to you from Zeus,who though far distant greatly cares for and pities you.He bids you arm the long-haired Achaians for battlewith all speed, for now you may take the broad-streeted cityof the ...”

“... vans. At that time, remembering pictures of jolly Wehrmacht soldiers wrenching down the red and white Polish border gates, I felt quite protective about frontiers. But then I read a Polish novel. An allegory contrived to lull the censor, it described a tiny sliver of land between Belgium and Germany which had been overlooked by the surveyors as they drew ...”

“... Victoria cinema. On a visit to Cramond, on the city’s outskirts, he had noticed on the terribly white wall of the public lavatory a lone graffito: ‘Is there nobody queer in Cramond?’ Karl wanted out.It was at Cambridge that I first met him. We were both born in Edinburgh, but his background was working-class and mine was not. That seemed not to ...”