“... Clwyd County Council (now disbanded) and conducted by a high-powered team of three experts led by John Jillings, a former director of social services in Derbyshire. That inquiry concluded that ‘appalling’ sexual abuse went on for years in homes throughout the area. Jillings’s report was so devastating that Michael Beloff, a QC who specialises in ...”

“... one, where he met Edward Bawden. The two shared a love of neglected landscape watercolourists – John Sell Cotman, Alexander Cozens, Francis Towne and Samuel Palmer; they made a pilgrimage to Palmer’s Shoreham in 1926. Paul Nash, who taught them at the RCA, described their cohort as ‘an outbreak of talent’ and helped Ravilious and Bawden to find work ...”

“... of Labour during the Spanish Civil War. She was also active in the women’s movement, and took part in the protest against the Miss World contest at the Albert Hall in 1970.The inquiry has shown that the SDS focused on ‘extreme left-wing’ groups, Trotskyists in particular: ‘the International Socialists, who became the SWP in 1977; the ...”

“... Facebook just doesn’t care. When you’re in a room with them you can tell. They’re’ – he took a moment to find the right word – ‘scuzzy’.That might sound harsh. There have, however, been ethical problems and ambiguities about Facebook since the moment of its creation, a fact we know because its creator was live-blogging at the time. The scene ...”

“... When John Muir, the son of an emigrant from East Lothian to southern Wisconsin, was 16, in 1855, his father lowered him daily down a well shaft on their new farm at Hickory Hill. John cut with chisel and hammer through fine-grained sandstone until he struck ‘a fine, hearty gush of water ...”

“... be found trying to poison Lincoln while making up his ‘blue mass’, a medicine the President took for his constipation. But most readers, of course, will already know that Lincoln has four more years to live before he is shot by Herold’s friend, John Wilkes Booth, the most notorious of all those Americans who have ...”

“... and Censor’. St Clair quotes Eldon in 1793, when he was only attorney general and called Sir John Scott, telling an author that he could continue to publish his reply to Burke in ‘an octavo form so as to confine it probably to that class of readers who may consider it coolly’ (that is, people who would be unlikely to approve of it), but that as soon ...”

“... I was in the House at the time of the negotiations and have taken the trouble to talk to those who took part in them, and I believe that it is Carrington who should take the credit. It was he who took time to argue Margaret out of her fixed positions, and whose skill, together with that of Lord Soames, the ...”

“... and Edward feels guilty: ‘He gave her so little; he denied her the simple pleasures a wife took for granted – that business of cooking his meals, remembering his sister’s birthday, putting intricate little bundles of socks into his drawer.’All four of them are middle-aged or close to it, and have children. Edward and Binny ‘could never do ...”

“... their friend Stevenson, owner of the Stone Balloon. They vied for the going talent and Stevenson took to booking Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Pointer Sisters, signing acts to geographically restrictive contracts to keep his edge. The owners of both clubs were soon in over their heads. Jim took out hundreds of thousands of ...”

“... in real time over the course of the broadcast. The fortunes of the Republican candidate, John McCain, took a dive during the second debate in Nashville, when an off the cuff reference to his opponent, Barack Obama, as ‘that one’ caused a sudden surge of negative opinion, visible to TV audiences across ...”

“... last years. The best-known part of Kelley’s story concerns his long partnership with the magus John Dee. It begins with his arrival at Dr Dee’s house, in the Thameside village of Mortlake, near London, in early March 1582. Dee, then in his mid-fifties, was the Queen’s chief consultant on all matters occult. He was renowned as a ...”

“... the morning by way of Honister old quarry and consigned his dust to that hummocky moorland. When I took on Haystacks and its cliffs for the Fell & Rock Climbers’ guidebook to Buttermere eight years ago, I tried to evoke the bristling stature of the place, drawing on my own experience of its trickling and collapsing gullies, which few people have ...”

“... streak. Eager to join Napoleon’s army at Boulogne for the famous invasion of England that never took place, he arrived late in 1804, delayed by political intrigue. With little to do, he was dispatched on light duties around the local towns. Among his tasks was to look after some British internees who had been concentrated in Valenciennes after the Treaty of ...”

“... by a white author, though scholarly opinion differs as to its degree of condescension. Robeson took the title role in three major productions – London in 1930, New York in 1942 and Stratford in 1959 – playing it as the noble Moor tragically (or perhaps ‘pathetically’ would be more accurate) betrayed by his inability to perceive the nastier side of ...”