“... Party that represented the corrupt, gerrymandering and racist establishment. He viewed the Kennedy election, in which he took a junior’s part, as one more ‘delivery’ of the Georgia vote by the local patronage system. This is a truer account of the origins of ‘Camelot’ than many sentimental retrospectives allow. But now it is the Republican ...”

“... committee to examine NHS expenditure: the crucial brief was written by two young welfare radicals, Richard Titmuss and Brian Abel-Smith. He also set up the first committee to investigate the effects of smoking: both the Treasury and Lord Salisbury wanted to suppress its Report and Macleod, anxious to placate such powerful colleagues, chain-smoked his way ...”

“... But her very existence, in its unapologetic vitality, was enough to provoke. The graphic designer Richard Hollis, a contemporary at Wimbledon, found her ‘over-lush, you could say. I don’t know if you’d call it pushy.’ Of her work he says: ‘It’s direct, energetic, and I think that’s how she was … Her work looks quite confident, which is what ...”

“... that wants to be and can be your friends,’ he told the Colonial Office. Some, like the Labour MP Richard Crossman, were sceptical. Crossman accused Ben-Gurion, ‘the dictator who runs the Jews in Palestine, including the illegal army’, of playing a ‘double game’. The reason for the double game was that the Haganah wasn’t yet ready to defend the ...”

“... Iraq, he quickly became a critic, joining a group of officials from previous administrations – Richard Holbrooke, Anthony Lake, Zbigniew Brzezinski – in blaming Bush for undermining the post-World War Two system of international alliances and treaties which had institutionalised American dominance. But the neocon ascendancy in Washington meant that calls ...”

“... work than his scholarship: he led the Council of Economic Advisers from 1961 to 1964, under Kennedy then Johnson, and had been economic adviser to Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign until, just a week before the debate in New York, it ended with the election of Richard Nixon. Friedman had been closely involved ...”

“... that the Democrats were just as committed to the follies of the arms race as the Republicans. Kennedy promised for a time to break the mould, and even appointed Kennan ambassador to Yugoslavia. But he too proved unwilling to relent from Cold War orthodoxy and to embrace Kennan’s modest agenda for thawing relations with Belgrade. Kennan left government ...”

“... say. Closer perhaps are two authors Burgess includes in the Ninety-Nine: Flann O’Brien and John Kennedy Toole. His funniest creation is undoubtedly Enderby, who, from cramped beginnings, expanded into a fourfold epic: Inside Mr Enderby (1963), Enderby Outside (1968), The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby’s End (1974) and Enderby’s Dark Lady, or No End to ...”

“... a vote censuring the Chamberlain government for its failure to supply British troops in Norway. As Richard Davenport-Hines records, the minister of health spat on Profumo’s shoe after he passed through the lobbies. The Tory chief whip told him that he was ‘an utterly contemptible little shit’. Even for a headstrong young man it was a remarkably ...”

“... of Poetry, accepted five poems; in April 1915 two of her poems appeared in the Egoist, the paper Richard Aldington edited (‘I am so delighted to have them take me I shouldn’t mind if they charged me’); in August, HD invited her to come to London (she didn’t take up the invitation); and in October Alfred Kreymborg, the editor of Others, took five ...”

“... Select Committee inquiry – the longest in history, longer than similar inquiries into 9/11, the Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor – had managed to come up with nothing. Nevertheless, they all quoted the same line from Clinton’s testimony to the committee, ‘What difference at this point does it make?’ as indicative of her heartless obliviousness ...”

“... able to attract support from Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, Chester Bowles and John F. Kennedy. The right wing of the organisation was awash with antisemitism and Charles Lindbergh worship, but most of its followers eventually accepted the task of defeating Nazism. Arriving at Yale after the war, Buckley and his fellow conservative students knew ...”

“... the war on terror; Israelis who descend from survivors of one holocaust are now creating another.Richard Beck’s Homeland supplies abundant matter for contemplation. He deftly reconstructs the coup d’état that unfolded in the corridors of power after 9/11, but also explores the darker reaches of the American psyche: the vicarious sadism; the Manichean ...”

“... such marginal representatives of the Civilised Life as Harry S. Truman, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (whose presence was, BB felt, ‘life-enhancing’), and, most improbable of all, Ernest Hemingway. Meryle Secrest discloses that Hemingway was desperate in his suit for Berenson’s favours, and would have prostrated himself for a petal from the Great ...”

“... Air Act Amendments of 1990, which introduced sulphur dioxide trading. Economists such as MIT’s Richard Schmalensee and Robert Stavins of Harvard’s Kennedy School also became involved. They didn’t simply advocate a cap and trade scheme, but helped it gain political acceptance. The 1990 legislation differed from what ...”