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“... apparently split themselves in two and do both. Just ten minutes ago I heard Alexander McCall Smith, a writer of feel-good detective novels, tell an interviewer how his work comes to him through his ‘unconscious’: plots, characters, everything bubbles up from the murky depths and tells him its story. He just types it out. Now this I envy. My ...”

“... leadership to rise from the ashes. Several prominent Tory Brexiteers, including Iain Duncan-Smith and Steve Baker, have military backgrounds. As with the Second World War, Brexit will perform an X-ray of our collective moral fibre. Remainers love facts, but are afraid of the truth. This is, I suspect, as close to a Conservative ideology of Brexit as ...”

“... a year to host a Friday night show. Anderson also spoke at NatCon. At the ‘gala dinner’, Douglas Murray (whose latest book is The War on the West) insisted that Britons should not be prevented from loving their nation just ‘because the Germans mucked up twice in a century’. The soi-disant anti-elitist tribune Matthew Goodwin – who ate pages of ...”

“... in their catalogue. A whimsical fable decorated with doodles that could have been done by Stevie Smith. Mindfield, a chunky gathering of Corso’s work, was published in England by Paladin – with a brief introduction by Douglas Oliver that Corso much admired. ‘The speed of mind is still there, along with its ...”

“... open to all, as the Press quite obviously was not.’ D.G. Bridson, Laurence Gilliam, Jack Dillon, Douglas Cleverdon, Olive Shapley and Joan Littlewood produced programmes which ranged from adaptations of The Waste Land to features on homelessness and unemployment, from the uncompromisingly highbrow to the popular. Their ‘features’ broke away from the ...”

“... makes a particularly prominent appearance. Although two former prime ministers, Wilson and Alec Douglas-Home, attended the inevitable lunch, it was the old editor, describing himself as ‘just about the least consequential person among the 36 present’, whom Manny chose to have sit beside him. It is the Conservatives who flock most often to ...”

“... It had proved impossible to find any of Dame Barbara’s novels in local bookshops or even W.H. Smith, though I was lent a copy of Lovers in Lisbon by Portuguese friends on condition that I cherished it. There were two novels in the package, A Nightingale Sang and The Disgraceful Duke, as well as a small pink booklet on the cover of which is a drawing of ...”

“... hearings to have a national audience. He defeated the liberal one-time film star Helen Gahagan Douglas in a mudslinging race to be California senator and, not yet 40, was nominated to run in 1952 as Eisenhower’s vice-president. Accused of dipping into a campaign slush fund, Nixon saved his candidacy with a televised address known as the Checkers ...”

“... Hollywood stars, for example, attend AA, but you won’t find yourself sitting next to Michael Douglas unless you happen to be in the industry and making seven-figure alimony payments. There is no copyright on the 12-step formula and any number of look-alike therapies have borrowed it: Al-Anon, Al-Ateen, Chocanon, MA (Marijuana Anonymous), Weight ...”

“... newspaper intended for general reading, put it more clearly than that.’ Four years later, James Douglas of the Sunday Express announced that The Well of Loneliness was ‘A Book That Must Be Suppressed’ because ‘its theme is utterly inadmissible in the novel . . . Many things are discussed in scientific textbooks that cannot be decently discussed in a ...”

“... at motorway service stations in the UK, but he left Britain’s Bosnia policy, such as it was, to Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, and Malcolm Rifkind, the Defence Secretary (and briefly Hurd’s successor). One of Simms’s subterranean themes is the extent to which the old guard – Hurd especially – were still fixated on the Cold War. There was an ...”

“... of modern print technology. We are at the dawn of a new technological age: what Anthony Smith describes as ‘the third revolution in communication’ – the others were the invention of writing and of printing. The computerisation of print through electronic technology opens up the possibility of an abundance of information becoming universally ...”

“... The same ‘cash for questions’ controversy also later accounted for two senior ministers, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, who had to leave their posts at the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Trade respectively. The paradox behind this extraordinary succession of resignations is that none of them has been for what traditional constitutional law ...”

“... even Mrs Beeton – writing about cooking does not rate high). Betty Friedan gets in, but not Mary Douglas; Hannah Arendt, but not Barbara Wootton. In general, journalists get a raw deal. There is no entry on Katharine Whitehorn, Polly Toynbee, Nancy Spain, Helen Gurley Brown. Agony aunts get an even rawer deal: Marje Proops, Anne Landers and Dear Abby are ...”

“... not 16. Anyone in any doubt should have compared the speech by the civilised and courageous Chris Smith with that of the bigot Tony Marlowe. ‘Predatory’ is a word much in evidence, the frail faltering flame of heterosexuality always in danger of being snuffed out by the hot homosexual wind. 1 March. It seems pretty well accepted now that much of one’s ...”