“... in 1867, called ‘the purity of our purpose’. Disraeli is perhaps not the most obvious of Tony Blair’s predecessors for the Guardian to summon in aid of its own, consistently high-minded opposition to creeping American imperialism. It is true, nevertheless, that the British invasion of Abyssinia, which began in 1867 but concluded only in the spring ...”

“... This is not so much the case with male singers: I don’t think Caruso, Matt Munro, Perry Como or Tony Bennett have been written about as tragic lives (though Chet Baker, with the sweet girlie voice that none of the divas had, probably belongs on the women’s side). Even the neurotic Sinatra is mostly known for having fun. Singing for men can be technique ...”

“... are authoritatively considered by Desmond Rice and Arthur Gavshon. In Paragraph 110 of HMG’s own White Paper, ‘The Falklands Campaign: The Lessons’, we read: ‘On 2 May, HMS Conqueror detected the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, accompanied by two destroyers, sailing near to the total exclusion zone.’ This was the scenario presented to us, not ...”

“... attached to a much older intellectual tradition among American blacks – and originally among white abolitionists, too – dating back to the early 19th century. This saw the culture of Ancient Egypt as both the ‘classical’ culture of Africa and the source of European civilisation. The close relationship between Egypt and the rest of Africa had ...”

“... Probably the only place in Iraq where this is not evident is inside the Green Zone, where Tony Blair appeared the day after Maliki announced his cabinet. Blair’s statements at a press conference were a useful checklist of what is not happening in Iraq. He praised the formation of ‘a government of national unity that crosses all boundaries and ...”

“... records for album sales but is actually A Great Artist none the less; two girls, one black, one white, but both astoundingly beautiful and both irresistibly attracted to the men. The black girl is a pianist who ultimately wins the Warsaw Chopin competition; previous to this, Domostroy has made love to her whilst she gamely plays a scherzo in B minor. This ...”

“... Etienne, which has a capacity of 38,000, there will be a paltry two thousand Scottish supporters. Tony Banks has called the French hosts ‘miserly’, and 22 Liberal Democrat MPs have signed a motion condemning the French authorities. A few more tickets have become available thanks to a contingency fund. While Blair has banned his football-mad cabinet ...”

“... All were born within a few years of each other. All are suitably telegenic. All are male and white and Oxbridge. If all three formed a coalition together, one would not at present be too surprised. Where are the new sorts of political actor? Where, crucially, are the really new political ideas? Linda Colley For the first time in my voting life, I ...”

“... bag of bones / shivering under a blanket / of excrement’ is the focus of the title poem of Tony Flynn’s collection. Like Maxwell, Flynn is concerned for the health of the polis and understands that health in physical as well as spiritual terms. As Maxwell does with the homeless, he draws attention to what the polis chooses to forget – the ...”

“... into an art of extensive control. His straight sidekick is Zero, an immigrant lobby-boy played by Tony Revolori. Monsieur Gustave’s most spectacular ancient client is Tilda Swinton, who looks and speaks as if she had been mummified for years before her death. There is the story of a stolen painting, of Monsieur Gustave’s imprisonment on a false charge of ...”

“... that Britain had a weak and ineffectual parliamentary opposition at the most hubristic phase of Tony Blair’s premiership, during the run-up to the Iraq War. The situation was only remedied two years later when the parliamentary Conservative Party effectively staged a coup, installing Michael Howard as the sole candidate without consulting the ...”

“... up the beck. Not a rare bird, the heron’s size is never less than spectacular, and grey and white though they are they still seem exotic. Bitterly cold with snow forecast later so we get off early up the M6 to Penrith and Brampton, hoping to have a look at the Written Rock, a quarry by the river at Brampton with an inscription carved by the legion that ...”

“... service was the Vanguard in December 1994. It was designed to last 25 years; in the 2006 defence White Paper this was extended by five years. Any replacement would be expected to enter service by 2025. If it were decided that three submarines would do, the first replacement would be needed by 2026. Let’s assume it would take ten years to build a submarine ...”

“... of which, Sequence, he co-founded with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. Along with Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz aimed to bring a version of auteurism to British film, and they did as much with the documentary movement Free Cinema. In 1959, Reisz directed We Are the Lambeth Boys, and he made his first feature film a year later, Saturday Night and ...”

“... comparable to Mau Mau among the Kikuyu of Kenya: some 425,000 peasants were evicted from white-designated lands in Rhodesia as against 100,000 in Kenya. Comparing the Kikuyu with the Ndebele, Ranger argues that the Kikuyu élite were in process of becoming a land-owning capitalist class ready to collaborate with the colonial power and join the Home ...”