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“... are morally indefensible,’ and added: Even though the use of the new weapon last August may well have shortened the war, the moral cost was too high. As the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the people of Japan. In a life of public acts and public ...”

“... diatribe against Brussels, he told Cameron: ‘I think it will be a disaster if we leave. I may even have to relocate some of my businesses to be inside the EU.’ Cameron has some regrets about what happened next: It has been reported that I went on to ask him to sack Paul Dacre. Frankly, I wish I had – and I wish it had happened. I suspect he does ...”

“... From David Hockney’s Lord of Misrule to its repetition on the back of the jacket, this book is a bull shot, like the cocktail at the bar in Langan’s Brasserie. It consists of Langan’s self-portrait, written in the sleepless marches, to which the art critic Brian Sewell has contributed a memoir of friendship which will come as a pleasant surprise to readers more accustomed to his inspired Sowerberry in the columns of the Evening Standard ...”

“... by Islam. They play little or no role in art or design and probably never have done, which may account, Goody suggests, for the oddly limited colour vocabulary in African languages. The lack of any tradition of floral crowns or garlands and the absence of indigenous perfumes provide further evidence. Why should this be? Goody seeks the answer first of ...”

“... the command seems to be: ‘Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.’ Reviewers may invoke context, but they seem happier applying cold steel to exemplary detail: recounting plots, probing quotations, isolating terms, unravelling faulty metaphors. Close-quarter carnage sets the seal on a reviewer’s integrity, but it also narrows in that ...”

“... century, shortly after the Queen’s Hall opened as a new musical venue in 1893. As such, they may be regarded as a classic instance of what is sometimes called ‘invented tradition’, where venerable antiquity is less in evidence than is often popularly supposed; and where change and adaptation are at least as important as continuity and survival, even ...”

“... for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, one of the leading promoters of the Iraq war. We may never know what Obama thought Nuland was up to when she flew in to the Maidan to pass out cookies to the protesters in Russia’s backyard. But the message has got around by now that Obama doesn’t particularly want to know things. On Ukraine, he seemed far ...”

“... the president and his party fresh confidence in their efforts at comprehensive reform. Whatever may happen now, it was plain the defeat of healthcare would have been a death-blow to the Obama presidency; its passage has given him time to discover the means for a renewal of presidential energy. Yet the bill passed without a single Republican vote, and its ...”

“... appear in Oppenheimer. Or does he? The muddle of the film leaves a little room for doubt. He may be one of the entourage in a scene or two, without lines or a credit. But there is a larger omission in the movie. An essay in the New York Times in January reminded us that the Manhattan Project was a $2 billion adventure hidden from Congress. The Bomb was ...”

“... to the centre. The choice on offer at this election was real and the voters embraced it. It may be one of the better arguments, but that still doesn’t make it convincing. No election that results in the prospect of a minority government formed between the Tories and the DUP can be a great advertisement for two-party politics. There are many words that ...”

“... the amount of attention that has been lavished on the Napoleonic period in its many aspects, it may seem strange that a full life of Field-Marshal Prince Barclay de Tolly has not appeared before now: but it is not difficult to suggest reasons for this. Barclay had a rather dour and in some ways unattractive personality. He had little of the panache of his ...”

“... performing their parts; but the possessed priests were genuinely beside themselves. Dog’s Dick may have started as a joke, but by the time he inhabited Father Tranquille he was as authentic as a demon can be. This is the story of Loudun. We already know it, for Aldous Huxley, writing against the background of McCarthyism, told it in The Devils of Loudun ...”

“... regimental service in Ireland and India was dominated by his love of sports and hunting, but Sir David Fraser rightly demolishes the conventional assumption that such interests are incompatible with professional zeal. In fact, Alan Brooke took soldiering extremely seriously, especially the acquisition of languages and every aspect of gunnery. He married on ...”

“... regulators who looked incompetent. Branson’s strategy, his way of portraying himself as a plucky David in a world of corporate Goliaths doesn’t always work. Sometimes the charade is too transparent. Following the failed prosecution, BA turned its attention to alliances and takeovers to shore up its position, first with American Airlines, then Iberia, then ...”

“... of literature and criticism through a better understanding of Emerson. Believing all may involve something close to a conversion. Believing none will do scant justice to the work of one of the most perceptive of contemporary critics. Compounding with half will please nobody. From The Comic Sense of Henry James (1960) through A World Elsewhere ...”