“... The best bits of Blown away are the words of an impressive range of Stones people, from a louche Andrew Oldham to a superbly articulate Marianne Faithfull. Another Hotchner inadequacy – no new interviews or cooperation from the present band members themselves – again works in his favour. Here the over-familiar Stones story is retold from the outside, yet ...”

“... is now a scheduled ancient monument tucked away in flat farmland, its whereabouts indicated by a brown road sign pointing across a field of beet (or so it was last autumn). The aqueduct is a fairly short affair; it carried the canal across a narrow, shallow river valley, and replaced an earlier one, still unfinished when it was swept away by a violent flood ...”

“... Chapel Royal in 1515, written by the Venetian ambassador to Henry VIII’s court and included in Andrew Parrott’s The Pursuit of Musick? ‘More divine than human; they were not singing but jubilating [giubilavano].’ The exact meaning of ‘giubilavano’ has been long debated, to no avail. Or what does this résumé of national styles, written in ...”

“... early in the court’s history, the chief justice reached a decision that President Andrew Jackson disliked, Jackson is said to have remarked: ‘John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.’) If the court’s decisions are not seen as legitimate, its power could fade.Stephen Breyer, a Supreme Court justice since 1994, is ...”

“... of unionist tradition. Only in the 1970s would this harden into Thatcher’s and, later, Brown’s caricatures of Britishness. Kidd tends to ascribe these traits to Scottish reasonableness, a willingness to compromise that preceded the rise of the tougher political nationalism of today’s SNP. This may endear his book to defenders of Brownite or ...”

“... the second largest delegation after Senegal’s – and to appoint a white woman, Virginia Innes-Brown, as their de facto leader. Most of those chosen, including Ellington, Dunham and Louis Armstrong, had taken part in earlier ‘cultural diplomacy’ tours, which aimed to counter the growth of left-wing politics among former imperial subjects. Younger and ...”

“... of reproach and supermarkets are running out of Argentinian beef. The Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, is accused of doing too much and doing too little. The questions surrounding the foot and mouth epidemic – where will it all end? how did it all start? – might be understood to accord with anxiety about every aspect of British agriculture today. The ...”

“... She went late to the Slade and had an odd, apparently innocent affair with Professor Frederick Brown, then in charge at the School. Thence to Garsington, Bloomsbury, and a real, profound and absurd affair with Murry; and so, in the course of things, to Taos. She was famous for her ear-trumpet and her loyalty but never endeared herself to Frieda, who called ...”

“... to the reader part of a pattern, a story of America and celebrity in the late 20th century. Tina Brown asked Dominique’s father, Dominic (Nick) Dunne, to write about the trial of the man who killed her, setting him on a new career as Vanity Fair’s special correspondent on meurtriers célèbres. In Graydon Carter’s recent memoir, we hear of Didion and ...”

“... hit a lung and the heart, causing massive internal bleeding. He had no chance of survival. Captain Andrew Cox dispatched a helicopter to pick up the injured man and bring him back to base. The helicopter carried him to camp Abu Naji where he was ventilated, but his pupils became fixed and at 00.50 hrs on 2 May 2005, surrounded by medical officers, Guardsman ...”

“... A train rushes across a bridge and is bearing down on a hare that’s running over the washed-brown bed of a railway track. The hare isn’t immediately obvious because it is partially obscured by the driving rain. The train will catch up with the hare and kill it: there’s no escape, the track is encased by walls. The hare’s typical act of ...”

“... wife, Lesley Harrison. Georgios (‘Yorg’ to the family but mispronounced as ‘Yog’ by Andrew Ridgeley, whose version stuck) was the youngest of three children, and the only boy. He was six months old when Lesley’s brother Colin overdosed on schizophrenia medication while on temporary release from psychiatric care. Lesley’s father had committed ...”

“... carried off the philosophical laurels. The pairing is theatrical: on one side, ‘this little dark brown man’, ‘almost rude’ (in the words of a student onlooker); on the other, ‘the man with the white hair, not only externally but also internally an Olympian’. What were the authentic philosophical grounds on which the little ...”

“... been willing to gobble up their weaker brethren. ‘Longman’ is modern shorthand for Longman, Brown, Rees, Orme and Green; Routledge for Routledge, Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner. Chatto and Windus began in the 1870s as a partnership between Andrew Chatto who had drive, and W.E. Windus, a minor poet who had some ...”

“... the Vegan refused. Later she said: ‘Carmen, I hope your sister wasn’t offended but I only eat brown bread.’ Just before lunch the person who had the sex change was at the nurse’s desk in a flimsy blue nightdress, asking if she could wash her hair. But there’s still no hot water. The nurse was calling her Caroline. She looked very excited about her ...”