“... communal games and simple amusements. But while he was still an undergraduate, he was invited to read a paper to the Moral Sciences Club, an unusual honour, and his subject was ‘Mathematics and Logic’. In 1935, at the age of 22, he was elected to a research fellowship at King’s, also an unusual recognition of his potentialities. His early achievements ...”

“... of powerful loyalty and affection with irritation and ridicule. ‘Let’s make ILEA sillier,’ read a badge, now a collectors’ item, produced by an enterprising bunch of ILEA headteachers during an in-service training course. The reasons for this paradox are many and complex, but there are two major ones. The first relates to an awareness of the sheer ...”

“... Schwarzkopf writes, ‘now that they knew of my fascination with their culture’. General Sir Peter de la Billière, Britain’s commander in the Gulf War, seems even more smitten with Arab ‘culture’2. ‘I liked and respected Arabs and understood their way of life,’ he announces. ‘I came to appreciate the Arabs well, to appreciate their fine ...”

“... by the legend of King Midas. In his impressive study of the origins of the Keynesian revolution, Peter Clarke argued that Keynes was driven throughout the Twenties by policy and politics. He opposed the restoration of the Gold Standard on the grounds that the pound would be overvalued relative to other currencies. He called for public works to compensate for ...”

“... He called gossipy women prattletraps. Bad housewives – majordodos. Unfaithful women – peter-cheetahs. Beer and vodka – sledgehammer, poison and kerosene. And the young generation – pussberries … Once he strung up two cats on a rowan tree, making the nooses with a fishing line. ‘Breeding shebangers,’ he said, ‘catervaulting ...”

“... and judges from across the Commonwealth and a few assorted persons appointed for specific reasons (Peter Riddell, for example, a former Times journalist who acquired membership in 2010 when appointed to the committee examining whether British intelligence services were complicit in the torture of Guantánamo detainees). If we want an official list of the ...”

“... claimed implausibly that his works constituted an artistic whole. Some of Freud’s case histories read like lurid novels, with psychoanalysis assuming the role of the thinking person’s sensationalism. Wittgenstein, who advised one of his disciples to give up philosophy and made a few botched attempts to give it up himself, wanted to write a philosophical ...”

“... he adjusted the measurements upwards. He thought it impregnable but was proved wrong by his tenant Peter the Great, who had come to observe the royal dockyard, and was apparently trundled in and out through the hedge in a wheelbarrow, causing immense damage. I worry about those who pushed him. Read Sylva and Evelyn is before ...”

“... for a past homeland experienced at a distance and in conditions of relative ease. More often we read of poverty, distrust, conflict, self-doubt and legal insecurity, not only before and during World War Two but after it, in the new forms of persecution called up by the Cold War. This book is ungainly. It does not promise or perform completion ...”

“... islet is crammed with men: Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy Melchior van Cleef, Dr Marinus, Senior Clerk Peter Fischer, Junior Clerk Ponke Ouwehand, Arie Grote, Piet Baert, Ivo Oost, Wybo Gerritszoon. Their conversation is as cacophonous as their names. For instance: ‘most of us hands gather of an evenin’ in my humble billet, eh, for a little hazard ...”

“... within the paper and without: Tim Bale, Nick Cohen, Anne Perkins, Michael White, Martin Kettle, Peter Hain, Alan Johnson, Tony Blair (twice), Jonathan Jones, Frank Field, David Miliband (whose razor-sharp instinct for leadership contests led him to back Liz Kendall), Steve Coogan, Matthew D’Ancona, Betty Boothroyd. Papers aren’t just papers any ...”

“... fans. ‘You would have thought I’d kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, the way some of the letters read,’ he said. Even the papers went for him after he played badly in his first All-Star Game, the mid-season showpiece between the best players in the American and National Leagues. He decided he had to look after himself. He was no fool. Even Joe DiMaggio ...”

“... that his job was being lined up for one of New Labour’s rising stars such as Jack Straw or Peter Mandelson, Cook may indeed have been thinking hard about escape routes to the European Commission or the Scottish Parliament, but that doesn’t mean he was already a busted flush. He did, after all, survive another five years – and when he finally left ...”

“... A piece of bloodied newspaper was found at the scene – the Morning Star. Yet Mr Kent read only the Times, the Frome Times and the Civil Service Gazette. Did this mean anything? Another clue was the household laundry book, with which the police became fixated. The Road Hill case was dense with fabric. The setting of the murder happened to be ...”

“... it to a system of decision-making which is thereby legitimated. Instead it rests on the ability to read the ebbs and flows of mood and opinion so as to anticipate what is coming, find a wave that it is useful to amplify, and capitalise on the temporary force and intensity of numbers. It is a practice of politics analogous (not coincidentally) to high-frequency ...”