“... the epitome of the black matriarchal symbol of strength. The first quote is from a review in the Washington Post by Rita Kempley, staff writer, of the 1991 movie Boyz N the Hood, written and directed by ‘homeboy’ John Singleton; in Kempley’s words, ‘a rude, insistent rap, an unflinching, often funny, always ...”

“... Summers, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates et al) it was clear that Obama meant to play by the same Washington rules that created the policy disasters he inherited from George W. Bush. Obama had retreated into politics as usual. He never looked back. One did not have to be a sentimental utopian to be disappointed. In domestic affairs, Obama’s obeisance to the ...”

“... The first was as a point man between the British military establishment and the new government in Washington, a town presided over by another John/Jack the lad. Profumo’s go-getting reputation and unstuffy demeanour made him attractive to the men around JFK, who liked that he didn’t seem like a typical Brit, never mind ...”

“... Times that the 1994 Agreement was dead. Then they cut off the supply of heavy heating oil that Washington had been providing as interim compensation under the Agreement. Pyongyang quickly announced that the Agreement had collapsed, withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, kicked out the UN inspectors, removed the seals and closed-circuit cameras from ...”

“... section of the country. And on top of that they got a trade association to smooth their way in Washington. Everything nice and quiet, everything streamlined. The massacre of Dutch (and his loyal accountant with him) in the appropriately named Palace Chophouse is just part of that streamlining. Dutch Schultz is a wart on the ass of progress. Billy Bathgate ...”

“... is now Time’s favourite Russian novelist. According to their profile of him, he lives in Washington, jogs four miles a day, and greatly admires the Jefferson memorial. The Burn, which is proclaimed his masterwork, was written over the period 1969-75, but never published in the USSR. It’s hard to see how it ever could have been. The novel (evidently ...”

“... When​ George H.W. Bush arrived in Washington as vice president in January 1981 he seemed little more than a sideshow to Ronald Reagan, the one-time leading man who had been overwhelmingly elected to the greatest stage in the world. Biography after inconclusive biography would be written about Reagan’s two terms, as their authors tried to square the many gaps in his knowledge with his seemingly acute political instincts and the ease with which he appeared to handle the presidency ...”

“... were projecting a 50 per cent increase in the infant mortality rate. In a later memoir, John Maynard Keynes attributed the prolongation of civilian punishment to a cause inherent in bureaucracy. The blockade had become by that time a very perfect instrument. It had taken four years to create and was Whitehall’s finest achievement; it had evoked ...”

“... stay in Vienna paying handsomely for sessions with Freud. All the while, he kept a flat on Washington Square and supported his estranged wife, Elaine Orr, as well as the child she had with Cummings (at the time Nancy was born, Thayer and Elaine lived separately; they divorced two years later). But Thayer was not entirely at home in the modernist ...”

“... hall. Spalding observes, justly, that by insisting on the intervention of the American architect John Russell Pope in 1929 the sponsor, Lord Duveen of Millbank, was promoting, against the inclinations of British curators and civil servants, the ‘latest American style’, the style of the new sculpture gallery in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Pope ...”

“... book Celebrity Caricature in America, the catalogue for an exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington DC until 23 August, and you will also learn unmistakably to recognise the artist, Miguel Covarrubias. There’s Covarrubias again, putting Jean Harlow on the couch below an elongated, brooding Freud; she appears to be dreaming of cacti, shown outside ...”

“... the Canadian National Gallery and the Return of the Prodigal Son in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (the former loaned to the exhibition in New York) – were sold by Soult to the second Duke of Sutherland in 1835, and hung for more than a century in the magnificent gallery of Stafford House (now Lancaster House). Architectural recesses were ...”

“... in Greenwood, a flourishing neighbourhood known as Black Wall Street, a title given by Booker T. Washington, who promoted the idea that racial progress would come through the accumulation of wealth, not political agitation. (Whites, however, referred to Greenwood as ‘Little Africa’.)One of the paradoxical effects of racial segregation was that economic ...”

“... reform in Hong Kong – but it went against the diplomatic grain. Secret missions from London and Washington were creeping to Beijing within months of the massacre. When in 1992 Deng blew the whistle for China’s new race to a sort of capitalism, he became Man of the Year in half a dozen international weeklies. It was an inspired move. The well-connected ...”

“... Voorhees’s study is different. He highlights the all-important fact that in October 1962 John F. Kennedy was about to face congressional midterm elections. The results would determine the fate of his presidency, as well as his prospects for re-election in 1964. Kennedy’s New Frontier domestic agenda – which promised a huge house-building ...”