“... of Russians to Britain was good for business … Wealthy Russians buy property in London and the Home Counties, send their children to British private schools, and go shopping in Harrods (and Selfridges). Increasingly, Russians come to the UK to settle their legal disputes, commercial and matrimonial. All this is a boon to headmasters, divorce ...”

“... to know how exactly the plan to stop Stalker was arrived at: all we can be certain of is that a Home Office official met with James Anderton, Colin Sampson, Sir Philip Myers, and Lawrence Byford (HMI for North West and Ulster) during the Police Federation Conference in Scarborough, just one week before Stalker was removed from the RUC inquiry. It is a tacit ...”

“... with Indian women (in 2004, a large Cree delegation travelled to Orkney to visit ‘the home of their grandfathers’). Some Scots gave real support to the ‘first peoples’ in times of crisis. But in the long term, the joint endeavour turned into what Devine calls a ‘historic disaster’ for Indian societies, ravaged by disease, alcoholism and ...”

“... the housing crisis in the Highlands and the unwillingness of any government to tackle second-home ownership; the characterisation of the region as a place of picturesque wildness, a holiday destination, which implicitly classes infrastructure as an anomaly; and the continuing waste and environmental damage from field sports (inhibited woodland ...”

“... virtue and learning. Everybody’s advocate and a model judge, he is a splendid public servant, at home and abroad. Colet used to call him England’s only genius. As clever as he is good, More is a living refutation of the belief that true Christians are to be found only in monasteries. Erasmus’s More, pictured as dragged to Henry’s court and moving ...”

“... in the index. The assassination of Aldo Moro is referred to five times; the assassinations of Lord Moyne and of Count Bernadotte are not mentioned at all. The root cause of Arab violence is thus suppressed, and we are then given to understand Arab violence has no cause at all. It is mere violence for its own sake. At the time, as Mr Townshend says, the ...”

“... lovers hope. Currently Walker’s Crisps are running a TV advert in which Gary Lineker, returning home from Japan, sits on a park bench beside a little boy and then, saying ‘No more Mr Nice Guy,’ steals the child’s crisps. If Walker’s were smart they would make a sequel in which Lineker, making off with the bag of crisps, is stopped in his tracks by ...”

“... of the German declaration of war on Russia, ‘he found the PM and ladies playing bridge – and Lord Crewe said it was like playing on top of a coffin. They waited till they had finished – about an hour.’ The same code applied on the Tory side. When some MPs went to haul Bonar Law back to London from a Thameside weekend party in order to denounce the ...”

“... her chosen male mentors, Higginson most prominent among them; her late, happy romance with Judge Lord; Austin’s prolonged adultery with Mabel Loomis Todd, the young wife of an Amherst College astronomy professor; and the unexpected discovery after the poet’s death of nearly 1800 short poems. The stories of heartbreak and mental breakdown that colour so ...”

“... asleep. Tell them I ...’ From her temporary bed-clothed refuge the much-desired Flora could be Lord Jim tailing off into ellipsis, caesura, the cut-off. She could also, of course, be on a page of dotted Irish playfulness by Sterne or Beckett. Banville knows, hereabouts, what his house and lineage are. And his readers should be up on what to expect in the ...”

“... in a fine flurry. So what’s the point of effort in that case? Why didn’t old Roy stay home and write books Instead of pounding through this paper chase, The sweat of which does little for his looks? The bees have got the right approach to space: The moths flap uselessly like fish on hooks ... The tension’s fearful and one feels no better for ...”

“... to make a happy second marriage to Benita Pelly. As well as writing to her daily when absent from home, Brooke also began a diary essentially as a means of communicating with her. Many extracts are quoted, including an arrangement during the phoney war months for each partner to read the same passage in the Bible every day at the same time. In addition, the ...”

“... The PLO might recognise Israel. The Poles pretend Walesa’s not in gaol. But history here at home is the two Krays Let out of clink to mourn their saintly mother. The boys for all their rough-and-tumble ways Both loved her as they never loved another. People repaired with grafts, pins, splints and stays Still can’t decide which was the nicer brother ...”

“... but romance. Garibaldi’s expedition led to an outburst of enthusiasm from unlikely quarters. Lord Shaftesbury wrote to Cavour in 1860: ‘Your revolution is the most wonderful, the most honourable and the most unexpected manifestation of courage, virtue and self-control the world has ever seen.’ Cavour himself wrote to Durando that ‘the expedition of ...”

“... to sustain the organisation and all its activities without more and more frequent trips to the Home Office for bigger and bigger increases in the licence fee. It was inevitable that sooner or later some government would shout enough. What is perhaps surprising is that an administration so keen to break the old political consensus, so dedicated to reducing ...”