“... up on a whim a few evenings earlier at the Stanford Shopping Center. (I once spotted Condoleezza Rice there, smoothly circumnavigating the potted ferns and plashing fountains: a well-dressed zombie on a mission.) I’d found it – somewhat surprisingly, along with the paperback of Straight Life – in one of those depressing ‘HEAR’ CD stores, so ...”

“... rise in the price of fuel could kill many of them off.’Before leaving I had rung a pig farmer, David Barker, whose farm is north of Stowmarket in Suffolk. Barker is 50 years old. His family has been farming pigs in Suffolk for four generations; they have lived and worked on the present farm since 1957. He owns 1250 acres and 110 sows, which he breeds and ...”

“... but when the European Council met to decide whether to open accession negotiations with Turkey, Rice telephoned the assembled leaders from Washington to ensure the right outcome, without hearing any inappropriate complaints from them about sovereignty. At this level, friction between Europe and America remains minimal. Why then has there been that sense of ...”

“... earlier, denounced wind power as a crackpot Labour idea that ‘wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding’. He didn’t name this bad prophet, but I shall. It was Boris Johnson. With the conversion to wind-love of the Brexity end of British politics, the entire governing class now supports the programme to fill the far shallows of the North Sea, the ...”