“... groups or clandestine agents’. The alleged collusion between Saddam Hussein and Zarqawi may have been an invention, but this type of collusion is widespread, from the CIA’s backing of Central American death squads to the anti-FARC paramilitaries sponsored by the Colombian state. The problem with trying to assess the epistemological status of ...”

“... the working class held by employers, politicians and the formulators of popular opinion. The first may perhaps be termed the ‘high Tory’ conception of the ‘dangerous classes’ as volatile, irrational, potentially hostile. Strikes here represent latter-day peasants’ revolts, always liable to get out of hand. On this view, effective containment of the ...”

“... part of the book explores the plays about English history: the six King Henry plays and two King Richard plays, which relate the origins and course of the Wars of the Roses, and King John. But there are also extensive discussions of the contemporary political pertinence of Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and even The Merry Wives ...”

“... Six hundred years ago this summer, Richard II lost his throne. Preoccupied by the attempt to shore up his failing Irish peace settlement, Richard unwisely delayed his return to the mainland in order to confront a rumoured uprising, and landed to find his kingdom already slipping from his grasp ...”

“... of great works this is surely true. But links between early and later writing by an artist may be allowed to illuminate both. There is one very early and imperfect play by Shakespeare which may throw surprising light on the absolutely achieved and mature Hamlet, not as a source, but as in itself powered by a ...”

“... propose a man’s health on his 359th [it was actually the 361st] birthday,’ Shaw said, ‘you may be sure that … what his health requires is country air … But Stratford wants a new theatre. The Memorial is an admirable building, adapted for every conceivable purpose – except that of a theatre.’ Shaw’s fellow governors felt it necessary to make ...”

“... Richard Rayner’s The Blue Suit is a memoir, a work of non-fiction. In it his father dies several times: of cancer, in a car crash, missing presumed drowned and, finally, of a heart attack. He makes guest appearances in between, as a sick man in Scotland, as a diplomat in Australia, as a stepfather. These events all form part of a story, a sort of Arabian Nights of the confessional, in which Rayner admits his real life to his girlfriend (‘one confession veiling the next’), and the whole truth turns out to be a narration of the lies he has told ...”

“... Right was less reluctant to contemplate violence, and urged the military to intervene, though it may have been surprised by the ferocity of the coup. By 11 September 1973 Allende had run out of options. Pinochet, who had leapfrogged to the top of the list of senior generals the previous month (an early indication that he was Allende’s equal in political ...”

“... Catholic priests, bringing hundreds to trial for alleged paedophilia. Some of these accusations may well have been based in fact, but many were not; the regime exploited them to secularise Catholic schools and close down many other lay institutions. Relations continued to deteriorate, and hundreds of German Catholic priests were imprisoned in concentration ...”

“... enter into the phenomenon of Peterley Harvest, a novel composed by the librarian and bibliographer Richard Pennington and offered to the world by him and his first publisher – in what spirit it is for us to examine – as the genuine diary, covering the years 1930 to 1939, of a certain David Peterley, scion of an ancient landed family. Peterley’s diary and ...”

“... left-wing opinion. Bagshaw’s situation is in some degree that of all intellectuals. Enthusiasm may die, but sheer professional interest mercifully remains. I thought of Bagshaw when reading Frank Kermode’s lively little book History and Value, and I thought of him again while enjoying Richard Cobb’s Something to hold ...”

“... includes Akihito (emperor), Akira (barboy), Tadashi Asami (tattooed man), John Ashbery (poet), Richard Avedon (photographer), Tamasaburo Bando (kabuki actor), Cecil Beaton (photographer/designer) and Truman Capote (author). He arrived in Tokyo at a time when Mount Fuji could be seen from all over the city because the intervening buildings had recently been ...”

“... Michael Burn assumes in this book that the name of Richard Hillary means nothing to present-day readers, so the reviewer had better follow his practice and provide biographical details. Although he was born in Australia shortly after the end of the First World War, Hillary came to England at an early age and had a thoroughly English upper middle-class education – prep school, followed by public school (Shrewsbury) and Oxford (Trinity College ...”

“... claim was by lineal descent from Edward III, and was a strong one if you ignored the deposition of Richard II in 1399. In the mid-1450s, Richard, Duke of York, Edward’s father and England’s pushiest peer, had twice attempted to sideline Henry VI, who suffered from lengthy spells of mental illness and was repelled by the ...”

“... among analytic philosophers (he is often referred to as ‘the smartest philosopher in America’) may, at this point, still expect that these large questions will, as usual, rapidly be reformulated so as to abandon the non-technical level at which they were initially asked. But the very next paragraph shifts the tone. ‘Our various questions,’ Nozick ...”