“... is a notable difference between Hollywood and Forty-Second Street, however, Hollywood, like Henry Ford, conquered the world by mass production: in this instance, of dreams. Its fundamental concern was with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as measured by box-office returns. The musical analogue of Hollywood has, of course, been profoundly imbued ...”

“... even wish myself dead.’ To Wells he complains of ‘creeping imbecility’, and, hearing that Ford Madox Ford is in trouble, he is quick to point out that his state is ‘just as bad in its way’. His correspondence with Roger Casement brings out the best in him; he was most at ease with men of action like Casement or ...”

“... in defence of execrable and horrible sinnes of forbidden – unlawful fleshlinesse ... ’ Richard Barnfield, after allowing a lovesick Arcadian to pour out his passion for ‘Ganymede’ in The Affectionate Shepherd, took refuge somewhat disingenuously in the explanation that the poem was ‘nothing else but an imitation of Vergil in the second ...”

“... Sisman has now studied three: Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Briggs, leaving only Eric Hobsbawm to Richard Evans. Briggs’s widow, Susan, commissioned Sisman to write this Life, and in fact the man himself noted before his death in 2016 that if there had to be a biography, Sisman would be the right person to do it. The result is an elaborately detailed and ...”

“... crew for a 16-year-old girl to be ogling; from plain to downright ugly, if you don’t count Glen Ford or Dana Andrews (who weren’t exactly Paul Newman or Montgomery Clift themselves). My generation have Cahiers du cinéma, Godard and Truffaut to thank for the earlier generation of movie stars we might have overlooked. More fundamentally, we have to thank ...”

“... not seen since the wave of strikes that followed World War Two. But the administrations of Nixon, Ford and Carter weren’t particularly moved by the industrialists’ troubles. Later, the double-dip oil shocks that followed the Opec embargo of 1973 and then the Iranian Revolution of 1979 served to ratchet up the costs of production in an increasingly ...”

“... of the people we know as the Duke of Clarence, Prince Edward, Queen Anne and others. The movie is Richard III, although the man in the novel doesn’t know this, since he has caught only part of the film on television, and the time is the eve of the battle of Bosworth Field. The toy planes and the movie run through the novel like flickering images of endless ...”

“... a misplaced and unflinching faith in his own righteousness, but to trust his wife. Then there’s Richard Rycart, a former foreign secretary, sacked for opposing the war in Iraq, who now works for the UN. He’s more Dominique de Villepin than Robin Cook, with his handsome mane of grey hair and aquiline nose. Rycart is causing considerable trouble for ...”

“... of a manager for Unilever in colonial Ghana, he was spotted as likely material by a scout for the Ford Foundation and dispatched to Minnesota to study economics at a local college. There, Traub explains, he learned something of more lasting value: Annan ‘had become persuaded of the merits of capitalism, and of the American way generally’. Perhaps with ...”

“... God help me, I had lucky zits – if you see me in the next few years and my face is cratered like Richard Burton’s, you’ll know why. Most important, I had to wear an ugly pair of red velvet shoes that looked like horse hooves, which I had also worn on Election Day in 2012. The vegan leather had crumbled badly since the Obama administration, which must be ...”

“... offshoots – or contracts for organisations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation, which seemed at first to exist for scarcely any purpose other than to further US foreign policy and provide cover for the CIA’s machinations. Ford’s present reputation and munificence in Asia, Africa and ...”

“... religious reawakening, sold well and was made into a sentimental movie starring Judy Holliday and Richard Conte. Backed by a reasonably lavish promotional campaign (‘In a CHANGING world, this motion picture is joyously dedicated to the heartwarming fact that BABIES still come in the same old, wonderfully old-fashioned way!’), the film was profitable and ...”

“... Bibles into heathen lands. He wrote back, suggesting I finish my A-levels. I read the Reverend Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ, and Frank Morison’s Who Moved the Stone? I read Nicky Cruz’s Run, Baby, Run, and books by Charles Colson, books which are still in print years after their first publication, Christian megasellers. I also spent a lot ...”

“... to speak. In the US in the same year, the right-of-right Conservative Caucus – created in the Ford years under the auspices of Jesse Helms and Richard Viguerie – put up $221,054 for its ‘victory over Communism in Southern Africa’. Savimbi was on the organisation’s list of priority concerns. In military ...”

“... speculative capitalism that gave rise to the semi-Brutalist office and housing projects of Richard Seifert, such as the Anderston Centre in Glasgow, a half-finished and shoddily renovated sub-Barbican of monumental towers connected by walkways across a raised podium. Seifert, as Hugh Casson pointed out, had ‘loyalty to his clients’ where other ...”