“... of George III. In the course of his researches on certain ‘confidential letters’ written by Lord Bute in the early 1760s, Bottwink also manages to solve a murder. However, far from being the novel’s hero, the Namier figure is, in accordance with the reputation of his original, a crashing bore, dominating the breakfast table with the minutiae of his ...”

“... ruined with a bastard child.’ Places reappear. Amma and her friend Sylvester are entirely at home in the bar of the Ritzy cinema in Brixton in 2019, ‘surrounded by posters of the independent films they’d been going to see together since they first met’. Carole’s mother, Bummi, invited to a ‘Ghanaian fusion music night’ at the Ritzy a few ...”

“... on US territory. Diplomatic representations culminated in an exchange of letters between Lord Ashburton, special minister for the negotiations, and Daniel Webster, the US Secretary of State. They agreed that such raids could be justified only if there was a ‘necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment ...”

“... was supposedly the English East India Company’s patronage. The first Scottish Prime Minister, Lord Bute, allowed his countrymen the lion’s share of jobs and land in East and West Florida; while the conquest of Canada in 1759 enabled generations of Scottish settlers to impose their churches, culture, linguistic patterns, traditional sports and umpteen St ...”

“... away with weariness for a lover who may never come, is rebuked. She might have looked closer to home for relief. To abandon oneself to what is ‘elsewhere’, rather than to devote one’s attention to the birds of the house, is to invite fatal disappointment, visited on her by the unforgiving ‘amorini, who,/being unreal, demand/her head for what they ...”

“... painter Philip Burne-Jones noted in a letter to the Times that if the painting should ‘find a home in America … its days are practically numbered … No painting can survive many years in the overheated atmosphere of American rooms or galleries.’ The next day the Daily Graphic described the prospect of its loss as the source of a collective ...”

“... to destruction. Breakfast at Chartwell (1934-36), depicting Winston and Clementine Churchill at home, was taken back to the studio after its first exhibition to be ‘corrected’ and did not survive the ‘few minor but ultimately ruinous improvements’. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, a commission for the London School of Economics, shows the couple awkwardly ...”

“... as a result of the commitment of commercial banks to countries which could not repay. He quotes Lord Lever, who recently told a large lunch of international bankers in London that he had ‘never been so sumptuously entertained by such a distinguished collection of bankrupts’. The bankers may have laughed, but Sampson thinks Lever meant it. If this is the ...”

“... who was the Deputy-Prime Minister of the Kirghizi Republic. After we had discussed her goats at home, the excellence of her walnuts, and the fact that her district grew the most tasty apricots in the world, she came to the point. Fourteen times, she told me, her fellow tribespeople on the other side of the Afghan border had asked for military help to ...”

“... inspecting her: ‘Your sweat, your wrinkle cream – quite useful, Eh?’ To make her feel at home, the goddess addresses her as Elly. The vulgar touch is applied not only to mortals but also to Homer’s beautiful but terrifying goddesses. When Aphrodite rescues Paris she comes ‘waltzing up to it, in oyster silk,/Running her tongue around her ...”

“... the refugees (bearing in mind that Dayton does not specify the right of Croatian Serbs to return home)? The Dayton Agreement is probably the only way out of the current mess. But the very novelty of this peace deal means Europe must remain extremely cautious about the possibility of it succeeding. How did our continent allow itself to sink into such a mire ...”

“... orphan, adopted by his rakish uncle Edward, also a guard at the Glace. They live together in the Lord Nelson Hotel, and get on well enough, despite differences of disposition. Edward likes to womanise, gamble and drink whisky; DeFoe is introverted, shy and given to ironing at times of emotional tension. His troubled love affair with Imogen Linny, a caretaker ...”

“... life than we were; but it would be useful to look – as Bridge does not – at some of the parts Lord Nolan’s reforms have not reached. Some minor scams which escaped Nolan, such as the merchandising of MPs’ addresses (for a sizable fee MPs gave as their home address the office of a lobbying organisation, to which ...”

“... From 1963, when the Engineering Building was completed, every alert architect or student, from home or abroad, took the train or headed up Ernest Marples’s empty new M1 to see what had happened in Leicester. Following the, by then, well-worn pilgrimage route in the early 1970s, I can remember the electrifying effect of the building, even on the dingiest ...”

“... together. Winston’s wife Clementine was a very good player, too – when she could get away from home for long enough to show it. She met Lindemann in mixed doubles at Eaton Hall in the summer of 1921, and rather took to him. At the same time, the duke came to suspect that Lindemann and Churchill would get on well together, had them both to dinner, and was ...”