“... dividing idiocies and employ our energies directly, as best we can, on the actual material of the vital inheritance that unites us and divides us.’ The Gaelic poet he commemorates is Padraigin Haicead (1600-1654), and he provides a translation of a tribute from Haicead to a harper which might serve as an epigraph for the whole volume: Blessings on your ...”

“... relationship between these two elemental figures of the Russian revolution was intricate and vital, as only a great novelist might have conceived it.’ What a challenge! I read on: ‘It began in polemic. In 1904 Trotsky, who had not yet broken with the Mensheviks, wrote of Lenin as a man “hideous” and “dissolute”.’ This was a revelation, a ...”

“... of Thomas Gray, Allen Ramsay and Oliver Goldsmith, casually mentions that he does not need to read David Hume on miracles, and obliquely compares his own work with that of Milton? There is a paradox here: the more Bewick strove to establish his credentials as an artist, the more apparent it becomes that he was not the bon sauvage he was portrayed to ...”

“... to entail unkindness. Impersonality of this sort is at odds with the assumption that the most vital connections are made when all the concerned parties open up, find what they have in common and come to be comfortable with each other. Such purging of distance and discomfort, according to Sennett, stops one recognising and responding to the autonomy of ...”

“... institutions and environments but – and here is the real tragedy – of everything most vital and beautiful in the modern world itself.’ The ten-year construction/ destruction of the Bronx was only the beginning of its long-term ruin. This story is repeated internationally. Donald Riche tell us that in Japan the growth of the automobile led to a ...”

“... off them, not fear of arrest, or of Isis or the CIA, but fear of losing a story or missing a vital exclusive. But MacAskill was not put off by Greenwald and Poitras’s protectionism and they went to Hong Kong in a posse. Compared to any other major leak in recent times, the material passed on was not only of the highest order but beautifully ...”

“... powerful man in the country and do their best to pretend he has some claim to be taken seriously (David Cameron reached the same plateau when his inability to remember how many houses he owned was allowed to fade into oblivion). With the result in the bag, the party handlers could safely let Kenny out of his pen for the final three-way debate. All in ...”

“... coaches and managers of the major world soccer teams, and all manner of celebrities, ranging from David Beckham to Charlize Theron. There has been much speculation about whether Diego Maradona will attend the draw. He has been banned from doing so after a recent foul-mouthed TV performance, judged to have brought the game into disrepute, but he is apparently ...”

“... resentment. Greek anti-semitism erupted in pogroms in Smyrna and Salonica. (Ottoman Jews, whom David Ben-Gurion despaired of converting to Zionism, were thus natural allies of the Turks.) In Alexandria under the Ottomans and from 1882 under the British, Europeans considered it acceptable to give Arabs a good hiding from time to time. The blending of ...”

“... travel. It is the internal passport, an instrument of state control like the identity cards that David Blunkett is planning for us. Until 2002 it recorded not only your name, age and address, but your ‘nationality’ as well. Our word ‘Russian’ does duty for two distinct adjectives, rossiski and russki. The Russian Federation, like the Russian Academy ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... and has given rise to great unease, even evasiveness, among liberal commentators in Israel. David Shulman’s afterword to this edition is an impressive exception. Khirbet Khizeh is an Arab village, which is captured – more or less without a fight – by a detachment of Israeli soldiers in the 1948 war. (The word khirbah in Arabic, like the Hebrew ...”

“... rowdy teenagers on their estates, the victims of Harold Shipman (whose suicide apparently tempted David Blunkett to ‘open a bottle’). Often, these people are defenceless because they are powerless, and they are powerless because they are poor, less well educated and culturally marginalised. And yet they are still British, and deserving of the state’s ...”

“... at the best of times – failed to perceive their good fortune; they still don’t.Although David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had played a central role in negotiating the agreement, many unionists believed they had been conned. While the agreement won the near unanimous endorsement of nationalists in Northern Ireland, it was ...”

“... fans will recognise the old cast of characters, those almost-forgotten names – Charles Colson, David Young, Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh – and there is pleasure in this: a bit like watching an old horror film on late-night TV. Yet on that level Mr Hersh is not exciting. We know the Watergate story from every angle and, by now, from the memoirs of almost every ...”