“... by or on behalf of the late Shah, or from those first blow-by-blow accounts assembled by the international press corps, crowding into the Inter-Continental Hotel to witness the last days of the ancien régime. Glamorous titles, such as Iran: La Poudrière or Les Secrets de la Révolution Islamique, rarely bring any deeper analysis. The more ...”

“... the run-up to the 2017 general election, Theresa May might now be steering us through the Covid-19 crisis: trusted, sensible and reliable, however costively unimaginative and incapable of the nimble feats of very un-Conservative gymnastics so far performed by Boris Johnson’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak. And without that late surge, Johnson’s chief ...”

“... hotels and offices, but this portrait was startlingly rakish. Our talk came to an end when a group of middle-aged men in shiny suits burst in, all of them sporting carefully trimmed, crescent-shaped moustaches and the glossy, tanned complexions seen on political smoothies everywhere. After a round of perfunctory handshakes they left as quickly as they ...”

“... between the Milibands and marital disharmony in the Balls family is competition within this small group. The new politics which is supposedly emerging around Ed Miliband looks like being not much more than a further iteration of this Namierite struggle, as Miliband entrenches his position by marginalising potential rivals. In its reliance on the advice and ...”

“... have similarly exaggerated the North Korean threat: indeed, the second North Korean nuclear crisis began in October 2002, when ‘sexed-up’ intelligence was used to push Pyongyang against the wall and make bilateral negotiations impossible. The complacent US public seems unperturbed by Bush’s failure so far to find a single WMD in Iraq, even if the ...”

“... repeatedly requested access and was usually denied. This was a strategy clearly intended to limit international scrutiny. What was, on the ground, a tremendous din of atrocities was transformed into a quiet war, out of sight and out of mind.Until war broke out, the big story in Ethiopia had been the remarkable rise to power of its prime minister, Abiy ...”

“... the remaking of social order which accompanies that; and capitalism’s inherent tendency for crisis, for cycles of boom and bust. I should, however, admit that I haven’t quoted these sentences exactly as Marx wrote them: where I wrote ‘capitalism’, Marx had ‘the bourgeoisie’. He was talking about a class and the system which served its ...”

“... villas adjoined slums with no running water or electricity. Western sanctions meant international aid was reduced to a bare minimum. Rackets and rent-seeking became stronger than state institutions. Virtually no one paid tax.Things began to change around 2010. Than Shwe, who had been Burma’s dictator since 1992, was in his mid-seventies, and ...”

“... The origin myth of today’s US special forces is the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. A group of college students had seized the US embassy in Tehran, demanding the extradition of the shah to stand trial in Iran. In an attempt to rescue the 52 US diplomats and military officers in the building, the Pentagon flew Delta Force troops in a C-130 transport aircraft from an island off Oman to the Great Salt Desert near the town of Tabas, where they were to meet helicopters launched from the USS Nimitz in the Arabian Sea ...”

“... looming recession for ever, but in the short term, here was evidence that the ‘cost of living’ crisis, manifest in spiralling energy and food costs, isn’t afflicting everybody. For participants in the housing market (many of whom also built up their savings during lockdown), inflation is still comparatively innocuous, while interest rates remain low by ...”

“... in opposite directions: on the one side, heading away from town and into the wilderness was a group of European pensioners – Germans and Brits – all dressed in bright outdoor gear, stout boots and T-shirts. They all looked anxious. In the other direction came the migrants, marching to the town, many leaving their countries for the first time, all ...”

“... terms of trade and GDP the world has three poles: the United States, the EU and China. But in the international financial system a single state has overwhelming power. The vast majority of transnational payments are routed through US banks. US treasury bonds are the de facto reserve asset around the world. The Fed is the global supplier of liquidity in times ...”

“... war criminals and were pouring money into Germany. In Paris a story went the rounds of how a group of wealthy Americans went to a famous restaurant and ordered a magnificent meal. Asked what wine they had chosen, they said they wanted Coca-Cola, whereupon the proprietor ordered them to leave. In those days, one of the Paris telephone exchanges was named ...”

“... a glimpse behind the scenes at the congress, which brought together leading figures from the international communist movement and high-profile figures from the Soviet Union, many of whom had known one another for decades. As they convened in Moscow in February 1956, three years after Stalin’s death, most had little real sense of the new political ...”

“... cent vote recorded for ‘yes’ allowed Saied to claim a resounding victory, but since local and international monitors hadn’t been able to observe the voting, it’s impossible to trust the result. Saied had prepared the ground by filling the Independent High Authority for Elections with his own supporters, dissolving the High Judicial Council, and firing ...”