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“... in the impact made by Evangelical revivalism on a young Glasgow textile merchant, William Smith. Deeply influenced by the military volunteer movement and active in Nonconformist mission work, he confronted the social worker’s familiar problem – that of seeking to retain influence over the teenager who has left school but has not yet embraced the ...”

“... and it would not be surprising if the first resignation were to come from Liam Fox or Iain Duncan Smith rather than Vince Cable. No doubt each of them has genuine objections to aspects of coalition policy. But if any of the three were to walk away, it would be as much from thwarted ambition – one of them was party leader, while the other two might have been ...”

“... a hair’s breadth of becoming deputy leader of the Party. Opinions differ, but a Party led by Michael Foot and Benn would probably have seen a mass defection of MPs to the SDP. As it was, Benn’s failure paved the way for Neil Kinnock’s purge of the Militant Left, as well as the crucial policy switch from renationalisation of key industries to ...”

“... achieved over the last quarter-century with little thanks to his ostensible political opponents. Michael Foot and his dog Dizzy can stand as a tableau testifying to the magnanimity (or credulity) with which the old magic is perpetuated among political romantics of all persuasions. No, what scotched the Disraelian legend as serious history was the standard ...”

“... lost is peepie-creepie, which I think perfectly describes the sad, appealing, murderous voyeur in Michael Powell’s famous thriller, though the OED instead defines it as ‘a portable television camera used for close shots on location’. Television was a new phenomenon at that point, and computers were barely visible on the horizon. Yet a number of the ...”

“... after her, ‘rapid narrative information’, along the lines of ‘you recall Brown, don’t you, Smith?’ Here’s how the work begins. Her husband, she answered, was a writer, too – at least, after a fashion. Fat men beat their wives, it is said, and he certainly looked fierce, when he caught her riffling through his papers. He pretended to slam down a ...”

“... a kind of literary quilt, and also that names, if they are made up of ordinary terms (word, smith, gold, worth), may revert without warning to their ordinary life.Wordsworth doesn’t juggle with his name as other writers do: Shakespeare, for example, has plenty of fun with will, and Donne, speaking of the forgiveness of sins, writes: ‘When thou hast ...”

“... got their mental picture of it from a 1998 thriller called Enemy of the State. A lawyer (Will Smith), swept up by mistake into the system of total surveillance, suddenly finds his life turned upside down, his family watched and harassed, his livelihood taken from him and the records of his conduct altered and criminalised. He is saved by a retired NSA ...”

“... guardians of Saxon virtue lodged in the Corporation of London. Chief among them was Joshua Toulmin Smith, founder of the Anti-Centralisation League and authority on the history of parish and vestry. In The Metropolis and Its Municipal Administration (1852), he argued against bringing the City of London under the remit of the 1848 Public Health Act and praised ...”

“... believed him to be at fault, as in his personal attitude towards official and public reactions to Michael Fagan’s invasion of the Queen’s bedroom. Already, after Lord Mountbatten’s murder, McNee, with the approval of the Palace and the Home Secretary, had appointed a working party of his own senior officers to review current policy and practice for the ...”

“... the Channel to begin coining money in Antwerp. On 17 July, the bank’s first deputy governor, Michael Godfrey, eager to see war at first hand, strolled into the trenches and found himself crouching alongside the king, who was furious to encounter him there. As Macaulay writes in his History of England,‘Mr Godfrey, you ought not to run these hazards, you ...”

“... busy don, Sillery) to the more intellectual atmosphere of Balliol, he met Logan Pearsall-Smith, author of Trivia. The great man read an essay by Mackenzie called ‘The Undergraduate’s Garden’ and delivered his verdict: ‘Yes, yes, you have it in you. The authentic note of English prose sounds from time to time.’ That was just the trouble. The ...”

“... and nobs that he owned newspapers to make political propaganda. The life which Anne Chisholm and Michael Davie have written begins with a piece of elegant writing, like a dream sequence. It is an unpublished piece written by Davie as a very young Observer reporter. It incorporates Raymond, Beaverbrook’s camp valet who would stamp his foot and ...”

“... at 40 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, next door to Sidney and Beatrice Webb. With his elder brother Michael, Anthony went to the local school (Westminster), and he grew up thinking that he might work locally too, just like his dad. Lady Stansgate gives another insight on the boys’ upbringing: ‘They used to pretend they were workmen called Bill and Jim ...”

“... director of the White Star Line, who according to the script insisted that the ineffective Captain Smith, emblem of Britain’s exaggerated sense of its seafaring skill, drive his ship at full speed through an icefield so it could set a transatlantic record that would push up his company’s share price, allowing him and his friends on the boat to profit by ...”