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“... On 18 July​ 2003, the body of the weapons inspector David Kelly was found in the woods on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire, two months after he’d revealed that the Blair administration had exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Rachel Wells, the central character in Number 11 and the narrator of the first of its five overlapping stories, was ten when Kelly’s body was discovered ...”

“... a well-timed series of wars) and discover much about the distribution of prize money, a system by which the proceeds from the sale of enemy vessels were divided among those who had played a role in their capture. The wars themselves take a back seat in a narrative driven by squabbles over precedence and the apportionment ...”

“... question is: ‘Are the Conservatives any longer a serious party?’ A serious party can be one of two things. It can, like the Greens, be concerned with only one issue or one group of issues. Its members are not hoping to form a government – they know they are never going to do that – but they believe the ...”

“... others. Lady Austin was not inclined to go quietly. Claiming to find a passing copper too dishy to be a real policeman, she told the inspector who was apprehending her: ‘I could love him and rub his Jimmy for him for hours.’ The inspector cautioned her. ‘There is nothing wrong in that,’ Lady Austin retorted. ‘You may think so, but it is what we call ...”

“... This isn’t an accurate assessment, but even if it were, can a few hundred memoirs written by working people really trump the mass of data concerning wages, working hours, family incomes, longevity etc? Griffin would answer that the memoirs supply an authentic working-class voice and that ‘no matter how we try, it is not possible to frame the ...”

“... majority of works previously given to Giorgione were credited to other artists, and were replaced by various portraits, some of which he certainly never painted. Vasari’s book established the idea that Giorgione was an outstanding artist, a sort of Venetian counterpart to Leonardo, but Vasari was vague about what was distinctive about his work, beyond ...”

“... are intriguingly chequered. His medical studies in Maputo were interrupted when he was called by Frelimo to act as a journalist in the run up to independence in 1974-75; he went back to university at the age of 30. While the country was being mauled by civil war, Couto was studying biology. He went on to publish his ...”

“... By comparison with the acclaim for Disgrace, and the respectful reception of Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Youth has been met here with some disappointed and negative reviews (‘a tortuous exercise in intellectual introspection, and not much else’; ‘as fiction it is so interior and cerebral, it fails to engage’; ‘not wholly satisfactory as either novel or memoir ...”

“... diaspora, the onslaught brings back memories of earlier wars, witnessed at first hand or related by their elders. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was conducted to eradicate Palestinian ‘terrorists’, as Israel then defined the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Villages were looted and refugee camps destroyed. Beirut was strangled ...”

“... the enviable trick Of barely needing to chat up the chick – From Warren Beatty back to ruddy David. But why the broads latch on to the one bloke Remains what it has always been, a riddle. Byron though famous was both fat and broke While Casanova was a standing joke, His wig awry, forever on the fiddle. Mozart made Juan warble but so what? In Don Giovanni ...”

“... and much to the annoyance of the Quai d’Orsay – official policy should have been dictated by the Tripartite Agreement for regional arms limitation signed with Britain and the US in 1950. On his return to power in 1958, de Gaulle began to shape a new policy, consistent with his misgivings about nuclear co-operation with Israel and informal ...”

“... science doesn’t withstand much scrutiny). In the story so far, our hero, Neo, endearingly played by the ever baffled Reeves, learns the truth courtesy of a mentor dude known as Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and a sexy karate princess called Trinity (Moss). He goes on to fight the forces of evil, chief among them a certain Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who is ...”

“... and love affairs among themselves, and anxious about an imminent German invasion or an attack by the IRA. Mrs Welch, the cook, forbids her girls from speaking to tradesmen on prevention of terrorism grounds, though it turns out that her real motive is safeguarding the secret of her illicit gin supply. Charley Raunce, the former head footman recently ...”

“... of the real on a setting all calculated artifice. The analogy was brought to mind two weeks ago by the death of David Kelly, a real event which intruded in a shocking way on the calculated artificiality of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee before which he’d been called, a body convened on the face of it to ...”

“... Although statutory provisions require that in the ordinary way of things anyone awaiting trial be released on bail, 65 per cent of the 1631 defendants who had appeared in court by 7 September were denied their liberty. The figure for prisoners charged with similar street crimes in 2010 was 10 per cent, and though some ...”