“... end are still open to debate – except for those who are happy to give all the credit to Ronald Reagan or the pope. Concerning its origins, it is no longer enough either to blame totalitarianism or to demonise the Truman doctrine and George Kennan’s strategy of ‘containment’. More objectionable still are the parallels drawn by Donald ...”

“... gap between his ideals and ambitions on the one hand, and political realities on the other. With Ronald Reagan (and Carlos Menem in Argentina), a different figure entered the stage, a ‘Teflon’ president no longer expected to stick to his electoral programme, and therefore impervious to factual criticism (remember how ...”

“... Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties, was published in 1987, when Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and their free-market disciples were at their zenith. It ended on a downbeat note: ‘Most of the world is passing through bad times, but … hope itself cannot be abandoned.’ Yet much of the preceding narrative was about Ali’s involvement ...”

“... happened – perhaps in the course of one of those famous discussions on the ‘hot line’ to Ronald Reagan – which turned the Prime Minister from a neutral and rather bored observer of the argument into a passionate supporter of Sikorsky. Poor Heseltine, who had never got on with Mrs Thatcher, found himself being treated rather roughly. At an ...”

“... either American academics or sojourners at American universities – swallows the old myth that Ronald Reagan ‘won’ the Cold War by standing tough on Communism. Sebestyen concludes that ‘it was 40 years of Western “containment” that weakened the Soviet Union’; Reagan, he writes, ‘made no progress ...”

“... of a perceived disparity between his sentence and that imposed on others. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, pardoned two FBI officers who had authorised illegal surveillance of radicals, while their appeals were pending, and exercised his pardon power a few days before leaving office on behalf of ten individuals, including the owner of the New York ...”

“... Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger assumed Robert McNamara’s old job, Secretary of Defence, when Ronald Reagan took office in January 1983. In 1983, Powell became Weinberger’s military assistant. From there he became Deputy National Security Adviser to Reagan; and then National Security Adviser, the position held by ...”

“... is to overlook not only the work of such writers as William Gibson and Jonathan Lethem, but also Ronald Moore’s remake of Battlestar Galactica, a TV series that’s as intelligent, nuanced and unflinching an examination of the United States’ post-9/11 militarism, foreign policy and relation to the un-American other as you are likely to find. Having had ...”

“... political context, this critical interpretation is very much identified with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the subsequent attacks on Federal social spending. In Europe, it is associated with the triumph and continued victories of Margaret Thatcher and with shifts away from social-democratic control in a number of other regimes.1That ...”

“... controversial Taxi Driver, which was cited by John W. Hinckley Jr as having driven him to shoot Ronald Reagan, should be clarified by Scorsese’s other comments on that film. Travis Bickle, Scorsese says, has ‘the power of the spirit on the wrong road. The key to the picture is the idea of being brave enough to admit having these feelings, and then ...”

“... Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals – fronted by Gary Cooper, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan (the last perhaps still smarting from his failed attempt to join the Party in 1938) – presented the acceptable face of red-baiting. The HUAC targeted screenwriters; only one of the initial ‘Unfriendly Nineteen’ had never worked as a ...”

“... to the symposium display something of an Establishment bias that reflects the influence of Ronald Reagan and Alexander Haig, who, from the outset, identified philosophically and geopolitically with Mrs Thatcher’s cause. They had their own good reasons for doing so. After all, Mrs Thatcher had taken the initiative among European leaders in ...”

“... that if he so desired he could himself be the president ... It did not require the election of Ronald Reagan to demonstrate that at this point in their history, Americans feel most fulfilled by leaders who are, or at least resemble, movie stars ... No less an expert than Richard Nixon assured Elvis that he had the power over people’s imaginations ...”

“... their task. Worst of all are the heroes Raban hears praised most often: complacent naysayers like Ronald Reagan with his Hollywood pieties, and the ‘twinkling demagogue’ John Paul II, who toured America while Raban was on the river. Raban does encounter one local hero worth following, and in Memphis, Tennessee, he abandons his river journey for a few ...”

“... no such thing. Then there was President Carter himself. After being beaten in the 1980 Election by Ronald Reagan, Carter had an understandable yearning to be taken seriously, and Abedi took him very seriously indeed. The holy banker flew round and round the world with the exPresident so that both men could declare their shared faith in the importance of ...”