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“... read The Fountainhead at high school, and both were besotted by it. Quickly, very quickly, these star-struck, good-looking youngsters became Rand’s best friends, surrogate children, protégés and heirs. In 1953, Nathan and Barbara married; in 1954, Nathan changed his name to Nathaniel Branden. Early in 1955, according to The Passion of Ayn Rand, the ...”

“... for new political figures who burst brightly on the scene was: ‘Don’t be a Kerensky!’ Alexander Kerensky was the leader of the February Revolution in 1917 and briefly the darling of the democratic world until the Bolsheviks consigned him to the dustbin of history nine months later. He spent the last 53 years of his life eking out a living as a ...”

“... names of Paul Ives, Graham Paine (‘who lost his life by drowning’), Clifford John Dunn, Ronald Alexander Pinn and John Hill, all of whom were born in the 1960s, as I was, and died early.The practice of using dead children’s identities began in the Metropolitan Police Force in the 1960s. Until very recently, it was thought, in-house, to be a legitimate ...”

“... literature in the life of the country. ‘The USSR has lost its spiritual goal, its ideal,’ said Alexander Mikhailov, an official of the Writers’ Union and editor of Literary Workshop: Our revolution overthrew not only the Tsar but throne and God together. In place of God, the people were offered the world revolution and the victory of Communism. But ...”

“... on screen was reduced in the editing room simply because he would draw attention away from the star. After Lord Jim he said: ‘I’ll never do another film where I have anything to say to the star.’ When he played in a television version of Waiting for Godot in 1961, the problem was identified by Louis MacNeice in a ...”

“... for example, not seven; and the students had sung not ‘My country, ‘tis of thee’ but ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. At trial in Alabama the judge found the ad ‘libellous per se’. He instructed the jury to bring in a verdict for Mr Sullivan if it found that the advertisement was ‘of and concerning’ him. It did, awarding him all he had asked ...”

“... had tripped over one of Caroline’s dolls and broken his neck in the White House nursery’ – Alexander Cockburn, the Nation, 6 January 1992. The third argument is micro-historical. It punctures holes in the details, brings up contradictory testimony, offers alternative hypotheses. It tends to trail off into indeterminacy: we’ll never know who did ...”

“... in 1852, became a sensation and may have contributed to the liberation of the serfs in 1861 (Alexander II is said to have claimed it as an influence on his decision). For the rest of his life, Turgenev was the most famous Russian in Europe. His celebrity, but also the novelty of his presence, is reflected in the baffling variety in contemporary spellings ...”

“... doesn’t mean anything to them. A new music video by Shakira – a sexy Lebanese-Colombian rock star whose lyrics reunite Spanish and Arabic – does. This should be a time of hope in Syria. When the old President died three years ago, Syrians sensed the possibility of escape from the deadening, if steady, hand with which he had governed most aspects of ...”

“... a line of young bodyguards wearing headbands sat or crouched watchfully at the edge. A famous film star called Htun Wai, a comfortable looking figure in a lilac jacket and longyi, stepped up to the microphone and introduced Suu Kyi with a vertical flourish of his arm: ‘Daw Aung San Suu Kyi!’ He lowered the microphone six inches and moved to the side. She ...”

“... Mailer’s wingman to be. The stern upholder of heterosexual norms was a later guise. Along with star-spangled kitsch such as My Love Affair with America and neocon tracts such as The Bloody Crossroads, The Present Danger and World War IV, Podhoretz fathered a pair of sequels to Making It, further investigations of the wonder of himself. This was not ...”

“... as ‘a bottle-imp containing miniature figurines dramatising a large bird’s attempt to strangle Alexander the Great with a golden thread, or a bas-relief of a girl extracting from a cushion the doll of a one-eyed dwarf dressed entirely in pink, or a skull engraved with Old Norse runes sporting a lady barrister’s cap made out of pages … from the ...”

“... writer’, and he cut some contributions by more than half. One enemy he certainly made was Alexander Balloch Grosart DD, who was invited to contribute several entries for the first volumes, principally on 17th-century divines. As early as October 1883, Stephen was complaining that he had ‘had my usual letter of abuse from that old fool ...”

“... an anti-government demonstration, and the participants had sincerely held convictions. And yet the star speaker at this rally, supposedly organised to fly the flag of resistance to state oppression, was David Icke.Icke was a BBC sports presenter in the 1980s, smooth, bland and remarkable only for a certain glassy coldness of manner. Before that he’d been a ...”

“... baby’s father; whereupon it looks as though Florence did a deal with a man called Albert (Bud) Alexander, that by becoming Claire’s husband and the baby’s father, he also got a job for life. (Florence’s financial control over her daughter, Kraus notes with much perception, ‘was selective and punitive, as it often is in families of means’.) As ...”