“... open now and then, as, for example, by Clause 41 of the Great Charter of 1215: ‘All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs.’ There were toll ...”

“... Without the support of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, which won ten seats, Theresa May would have been unable to form a government. Hence the Agreement between the Conservative and Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party on Support for the Government in Parliament. It is undated but is intended to last, subject to possible ...”

“... For once one could ask for less space between the pictures (although when the crowds roll in that may seem a foolish wish). Amateur snapshots and old postcards tend to have high skies and extensive foregrounds in order to get everything in – the whole family, the distant mountain chain. Our two eyes set side by side take in a wide view but much information ...”

“... was announcing the shortlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction at the time. His verdict may prove to be no less premature than Johnson’s pronouncement on Sterne: ‘Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.’) Responding to Marr’s comments, Ian Jack, the editor of Granta, suggested that it would be more accurate to say there was a ...”

“... at large, on the all-important subject of respect. ‘My government,’ the queen said on 17 May, ‘is committed to creating safe and secure communities, and fostering a culture of respect.’ But Ali G got there first. In the otherwise execrable movie Ali G Indahouse (2002), which was shown on ITV as part of its general election coverage, the newly ...”

“... are more honest and more moral, more likely to be good blokes, than journalists are: but this may be because he judges politicians by different standards – he seems to think, for example, that it’s more important for them to be well intentioned than to get things right. Behind these opinions lurks a larger and more troubling notion: that journalists ...”

“... own right, created over many years to distil and give form to his aesthetic intentions’.† This may seem hyperbolical, for the clutter and mess in the studio are at first sight not so different from a run-down student flat or a long-stay rooming house. But there is a pleasing wilfulness in the refusal of an artist whose first career had been interior ...”

“... others. For instance, casual observation suggests that we are in the middle of a baby boom, but it may just be that imagining what it is like to be near term or strapped in a buggy in sticky weather makes me pay more attention to pregnant women and babies. The National Gallery’s picture of the month for July, Rembrandt’s Woman Bathing in a Stream, was ...”

“... wooden planks – the puzzling contribution of the exhibition designer. After a long wait, you may peer through a hole at the two great panels illustrating episodes in the story of Judith and Holofernes, which are painted with the same energy, the same incisive touch seen in the fresco, but on a miniature scale. In one scene the bleeding, nude body of ...”

“... of her situation, and the stoicism with which she faces it, are handled with a restraint that may disappoint admirers of the breathtaking lyricism of the narrative voice developed for Ruth in Housekeeping. Home and Housekeeping might also be said to form a diptych, though one based on antitheses rather than similarities. The earlier novel, despite its ...”

“... time translating, then went off to translate a text edited by Reeve. An accurate text, however, may not have mattered much to most of Geoffrey’s early readers. By the time he wrote his History there were some signs that an interest in Arthur was already growing among the French-speaking ruling classes of Western Europe, having been incubated for centuries ...”

“... an autobiography, or as giving the whole story. Regard it as pointing a way out of the woods that may only take us deeper into them. It provides lyrics, no matter that Sondheim admits to enjoying the music more. As any admirer knows, his gift is the unmatched dance of music and lyrics, the nearly stammered wordsmith skill that he calls ordinary ...”

“... group to restrict itself to fighting in Iraq – a suggestion Isis rejected out of hand. Zawahiri may now have some regrets but he also knows that Baghdadi may eventually fail – because of his reliance on extreme violence if for no other reason. It was a lesson al-Qaida learned the hard way. September 11 had set the bar ...”

“... brain is essentially the same as in the old body (no strange hormonal rushes). Even so, there may be limits on how different one’s new body can be if one is to remain the same person. I may feel I’m most essentially a mental self, that my identity is in some deep way independent of my body, but ‘I am not merely ...”

“... bank BCCI, which reported in 1992. The inquiry promised that ‘any individual or department which may be criticised … will be given a full opportunity to challenge the criticisms and rebut adverse findings of fact before any final conclusion is reached.’ The Matrix Churchill inquiry into arms sales to Iraq, which began later the same year, made the same ...”