Breezes blowing from beds of iris quickened her breath with their perfume; she saw the tufted lilacs sway in the wind, and the streamers of mauve-tinted wistaria swinging, all a-glisten with golden bees; she saw a crimson cardinal winging through the foliage, and amorous tanagers flashing like scarlet flames athwart the pines.

He is a political chameleon, as charming to business leaders he met privately in Aberdeen on Friday night as he has been inspiring to distressed and desperate Labour defectors in Glasgow and beyond.

A line of clocks in our cheap hotel displays the time in Lagos, Bucharest, Kiev: the capitals of pilgrims who come to kneel at the birthplace of Christ. In reality the entire world funnels through the Church of the Nativity.

The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others.