“... COMUSMACV. (In the flesh, Westy came over more as a hard-driving business executive.) On one busy day in the flourishing Saigon black market I bought an American fatigue uniform, boots, jungle hat and pistol belt (but no pistol), stocked up on anti-malaria tablets, and mastered the basic vocabulary of the war: ‘in country’ as opposed to ‘The ...”

“... deemed reckless even at the nadir of the Cold War – indeed, it was the worldview that consigned Barry Goldwater to crushing defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But eventually it moved inside the charmed circle, becoming regarded as responsible opinion and engulfing the Democratic Party even more thoroughly than the Republicans.During the weeks, months and ...”

“... in the spectacular palace of the emperor Huayna Cápac. But his expedition of 1540 from present-day Louisiana to the Carolinas amounted to a series of disastrous confrontations with Native groups. He ended his days trying to pass as a god before a local chief, only to be exposed when he failed to dry up the Mississippi, into which his corpse was ...”

“... For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world ...”

“... those of us who have no intention of following her recommendation that for Keats we substitute Barry Cornwall may wonder whether the pathos of Keats’s life gave him an unfair advantage. It is necessary to recognise how powerful the effects of grief, shame, indignation, opportunism, fad, faction and accident were on the resuscitation of his name, whose ...”

“... figure than Hallstein, a politician who dealt on equal terms with all the national leaders of the day, Delors led them to the single currency, but failed to achieve the social objectives he had thought he could buy with it. All governments save Britain and Denmark signed up to the first. Few wanted much of the second. Delors did get cohesion funds – help ...”

“... The NarrativeV: Whose Fault?VI: The RebellionVII: The FactsFilm AudioI: The FireIt was​ a clear day and you could see for miles. From her flat on the 23rd floor, Rania texted one of her best friends from back home and they talked about facts. Who you love is a fact and the meals you cook are facts. When the sun shines it is a fact of God and England is a ...”

“... million. In the culture of New Labour, leading figures in Blair’s circle, cabinet ministers one day – Byers, Hoon, Hewitt – could offer themselves for sale the next. In the same years, indiscriminately of party, the House of Commons was exposed as a cesspit of petty defalcations of taxpayers’ money. In Ireland, meanwhile, the Fianna Fáil leader ...”