“... century, with being one of the first writers to praise the loveliness of trees. This won’t do. John Evelyn, a century before, had spoken of beeches making ‘spreading trees and noble shades with their well-furnish’d and glistering leaves’, and also of Xerxes’ admiration of the plane: ‘that so beautiful and precious tree’. Timothy Pont, at the ...”

“... smaller and even less well resourced: in 2020, before the Troubles Legacy Act was passed, Chief Constable Simon Byrne claimed it would take twenty years to get through its outstanding caseload. Legacy inquests have dragged on for years, too, in part because government departments have been slow to disclose information requested by the courts.In 2015, with ...”

“... Essex, a place with a long history of boat-building and Dionysiac boho revels: Francis Bacon, John Deakin and ‘Dicky’ Chopping, who made a fortune designing the dust jackets for James Bond books, all drank in the Rose & Crown on the quayside at Wivenhoe. Constable condensed the dominant myth of the English ...”

“... freely as terms of approval and abuse (often in relation to Britain and Hollywood respectively). John Caughie contributes a sharp set of notes on broadcasting and the cinema, among other things tracing the influence of Scottish Presbyterianism on Grierson and Reith. Barr, in another essay in the same vein, points out how radio was seen as socially cohesive ...”

“... he was posted to the Intelligence Corps. Before his posting we were visited by the local police constable and his wife, accompanied by two Special Branch officers who searched the house for incriminating papers. The wife joined us for breakfast, to make sure we didn’t try to hide anything. It was evident that she was embarrassed, and all the more so when ...”

“... a fictional symposium that ran in the paper between 1822 and 1835. The author of the Noctes was John Wilson, who constructed dialogues between his own alter ego (‘Christopher North’) and that of Hogg (‘the Shepherd’). The Shepherd gets the best lines – better, some have suggested, than anything Hogg ever wrote – but he is also made to look a ...”

“... War, because strong language – like strong drink – is a way to alleviate despair. In 1930, John Brophy and Eric Partridge published a collection of British songs and slang from the war. They claimed that soldiers used the word ‘fucking’ so often that it was merely a warning ‘that a noun is coming’. In a normal situation, swear words are used ...”

“... offered her sweets.One​ of the first people I met when I went back to the North-East was retired constable Joe Bradley, who looked after Heron in the gaps between police interviews. Bradley has thought a great deal about what happened in 1992, but talking to him made me realise how belief in a suspect’s guilt can permeate an entire force. Officers who ...”

“... at their job’, had reached their position only because they were Masons. In London, a Chief Constable testified that ‘Masonry still has some controlling influence,’ while a Detective Sergeant admitted that ‘I’ve seen Masonry used for rotten things in the Force in recent years.’ Knight devotes a chapter to Operation Countryman, the biggest ...”

“... may suggest, the level of sheer verbal force and arresting cadence is abnormally high. His friend John Sterling registered these characteristics when he thanked him for two recent letters ‘which, unlike other people’s, have the writer’s signature in every word as well as at the end’. The project to collect, edit and publish all known letters by ...”

“... but as home secretary he came into his own.One of Sidmouth’s spies, a man called John Castle, was on the action committee responsible for organising the huge and supposedly peaceful meeting of reformers on Spa Fields that was to be addressed by the mellifluous Orator Hunt. Castle tirelessly whipped up the labourers who had just been laid off ...”

“... some of the women believed it must be a power thing. A few knew him as Peter, others as Craig or John. One woman had him in her phone as Blue Van Man. Shown ranks of photographs by detectives, however, the women all pointed to the same man. His name was Iain Packer. He knew Emma, they told the police. He’d had sex with her regularly, at least once by ...”

“... Germany and at first didn’t hesitate to express his impatience with the scare: when asked by Sir John Barlow, MP for Frome, whether he was aware that there were 66,000 German soldiers in England and 50,000 stands of Mauser rifles stored in cellars within a few hundred yards of Charing Cross, he thanked Barlow for providing such an excellent example of the ...”

“... by 1943. If his books now end up in charity shops alongside discarded copies of the F-Plan Diet or John Seymour’s Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, it’s because the shimmering and peaceable ‘England’ he promised is not, after all, to be found waiting at the end of a deserted lane, or, if it were, we’d never know, because we’d be stuck in a traffic ...”

“... the ‘gravity’ of the offences. In August, the Labour Party’s spokesman on home affairs, John Fraser, wrote to the home secretary, Robert Carr, about the cases. The Sunday Times report on Fraser’s letter said that he had asked Carr ‘to pay special regard to the method of proof used by transport police’ and the lack of ‘independent ...”