“... faced with evidence of the dangers of US blood products, Labour’s minister of state for health, David Owen, had told the House of Commons that he was funding an effort to make Britain self-sufficient in blood products by 1977. But he was given a new brief in 1976. The Labour government dropped the commitment to self-sufficiency soon after, apparently for ...”

“... the fatal tendency of the Conservative governments to which Britain has been subjected since 2010. David Cameron’s declaration in January 2013 that, if the Conservatives won the next election, they would offer a referendum on membership of the EU – which wasn’t a significant concern, never mind a priority, for British voters – is a fine ...”

“... place, the second cycle of postwar Turkish politics was set in motion. As soon as elections were held, it became clear that the voting bloc put together by the Democrats, though at first distributed across a number of successor formations, still commanded a comfortable majority of the country. By 1965, this was consolidated behind the Justice Party led by ...”

“... fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost’. The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius added to Tyndall’s work in the early 20th century by pointing out that human activity was adding to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Because CO2, along with other gases ...”

“... British soldiers, French veterans from Algeria and Belgian mercenaries were recruited by Colonel David Stirling’s company, Watchguard International Ltd, for operations behind enemy lines. In the South too the nationalists were divided, with Cairo backing the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY) and more radical groups congregating under the ...”

“... lost brother, Benedikt (who was in the Soviet army), notices at night that the books are ‘each held in place by an iron nail hammered through it. A spike driven through the pages of history, a spike through the pages of love, a spike through the sacred.’ That second sentence appears to place the narrative and its imagery and intent squarely in the line ...”

“... in Odessa is split down the middle. Since the Maidan protests began, the Ukrainian supporters have held nightly meetings at the monument to the Duc de Richelieu, the first governor of Odessa, at the top of the Potemkin steps. The anti-Maidan, as they call themselves, the pro-Russian activists, meet at a fairground near the railway station. The pro-Russian ...”

“... top woman at a string of second-rank ministries a few years earlier. Like Williams, Castle never held the great offices of state, but she wrung headlines and achievements from the most thankless of posts: seat belts and the breathalyser (as minister of transport), the Equal Pay Act (as minister for employment), and increased child benefit and wage-indexed ...”

“... an 1827 cartoon by Michael Egerton (her selection of London fog illustrators, from Cruikshank to David Langdon, adds entertainment and insight all through the book.)Corton salutes Dickens’s mastery of ‘the use of fog as extended metaphor’. And of course no fog in literature approaches that introduction to Bleak House with ‘Fog everywhere. Fog up the ...”

“... of a scullery maid accustomed to hardship. And yet he sensed, beneath that image, glints of pride held firmly in check. She was anaemic. Her flat chest was not formed to rouse desire. Nevertheless she was strangely appealing, perhaps because she seemed troubled, despondent, sickly. ‘What did you do before you came to work here?’ ‘I’m an ...”

“... who was lord chancellor at the time, sought to reduce the length of sentences for serious crimes; David Cameron publicly overruled him. So, despite representing less than half the legal aid budget, civil claims – which are usually claims individuals make to remedy breaches of their rights – bore the brunt of the cuts. The strategy was to remove various ...”

“... were getting more serious. In 1974 another Clermont habitué and founder of the SAS, Colonel David Stirling, formed GB75, a vigilante group to be mobilised in the event of civil unrest.Veronica Lucan was not only unhappy, she was mentally fragile and her relationship with her sister and brother-in-law volatile. After a spectacularly unhappy Christmas in ...”

“... at the University of Manchester, but has since roved through several scientific fields. He briefly held an academic post at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, and has had other spells in large institutions, but for most of his career he has worked as an independent scientist and consultant. Early on he designed several instruments for analysing ...”

“... bourgeois, his sympathies anti-fascist. As a young man in December 1944 he was arrested and held in harsh prison conditions by the occupying Nazis until their expulsion from the city the following April. He studied medicine in Padua, where he specialised in mental and nervous diseases but read widely in existentialism and ...”

“... clarified me to myself,’ Ammons told him in 1970). Yet when Ammons assented to David Lehman’s interpretation in an interview for the Paris Review (‘I thought you had decided to become influenced by Emerson only after Bloom told you that you had been’), one senses mischief. ‘Harold wants me to be intense, mad, consistently ...”