“... Richardson, and he sang David’s praises. ‘He’s the ideal playwright. Never says a word.’5 May. Angels in America opens at the National. When I saw the original production at the Cottesloe in 1992 I found I was sitting behind Derek Jarman. I knew Derek slightly since he had been in the adaptation of Orton’s Prick Up Your Ears, and I knew, too, that ...”

“... but the idyll is deceptive as once, at least, the river has seen slaughter. It was in 1388 that Richard II’s favourite, Robert Vere, led his army floundering along this flooded valley, desperate to escape his baronial pursuers, who eventually caught up and cut most of them down a little upstream at Radcot Bridge.15 February. R. and I go down to Leicester ...”

“... else could the art historian E.H. Gombrich be transformed by a feat of necromancy into his son Richard, and suddenly appear as ‘a distinguished Orientalist’? What other magical city could induct a wizard of Johnson’s calibre and pack him off to France to discover Jean-Marie Le Pen’s followers celebrating their Welsh origins (‘nos ancêtres les ...”

“... would have been fascinated by the scientific methods that enabled the recent identification of Richard III’s bones and would not have been surprised that the remains of the last Plantagenet king should be discovered beneath a Leicester car park. ‘Grave-stones tell truth scarce fourty years.’ Nor should we bet on the posthumous survival of our ...”

“... extended essay, unfinished on his death in 2003 – the pages about 1944-45 have been written by Richard Neustadt. There is much to be gained from Jenkins’s insights but Patrick Renshaw’s study, though equally succinct, is much more substantial. Renshaw is a specialist in American economic and labour history, and, as might be expected, his book has most ...”

“... this assumption has been frustrated. Writing in 2004, five years into devolution, the historian Richard Finlay noted that ‘for all the talk of Scotland being more radical than England and of the nation being predisposed towards left-of-centre redistributive policies, these characteristics have not really manifested themselves in any meaningful ...”

“... 34 seasons, were dedicated to the subject. Buckley argued on air that however kindly Ho Chi Minh may have seemed in the 1940s, the sheer number of Vietnamese people seeking refuge from repression south of the 17th parallel surely justified US intervention on humanitarian as well as anti-communist grounds (this argument proved influential on the human rights ...”

“... there would be inflation. One must wait for economies to right themselves. (‘Is it your view,’ Richard Kahn asked Hayek when he came to Cambridge to explain his theory in 1931, ‘that if I went out tomorrow and bought a new overcoat, that would increase unemployment?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply. Keynes, although he greatly disliked Hayek’s argument, saw ...”

“... these officials on a strategy which is wholly unfamiliar to them and of which, to begin with, they may understand little. For that reason, above all others, it is essential that the strategies adopted by these institutions are debated more widely and more knowledgeably. Both Jonathan Steele’s book and John Gray’s essay sharpen a critique which has so far ...”

“... endorsed by the General Assembly that November, but fighting broke out immediately and worsened in May 1948, when the mandate ended. It was at this point that Lie sent Bernadotte and Bunche to force an agreement. When Bernadotte was murdered Bunche was ‘trapped’, as he told Ruth. No one wanted responsibility but everyone had a view. That November, speaking ...”

“... But there were no beds available and he was seen as an out-patient every day until his trial on 3 May, at which point a bed was found for him in Dulwich North Hospital. He was remanded on bail on condition that he went to hospital – if a bed had not become available he would have gone to prison. There have been several cases recently in which High Court ...”

“... the future tank became a naval project. Swinton did not learn of this development until late in May, but Churchill had made considerable progress in the meantime. A new Landships Committee was to be chaired by Tennyson d’Eyncourt, a submarine expert. Its secretary was Albert Stern, a banker in civilian life. By the end of summer there was general ...”

“... It is not merely the size of India; it is not merely the population of India – and I may say that one out of every four of the people represented at this conference is an Indian – it is that on purely objective economic criteria, India feels that she is an extremely important part of the world and will probably be an even more important part in ...”

“... could approach by manipulating or kneading the reality and the living men who comprised it. Djilas may have recognised bits of himself in Stalin: in particular, the ‘final ideals’ behind the restless realism. ‘Because the true fanatical fervour was so clearly recognisable behind his cynicism,’ a Swiss journalist wrote years later, at the height of ...”

“... suddenly, six volumes followed in quick succession, including a Selected Poems in 1968, which Richard Howard proclaimed ‘a masterpiece of our period’. Collected Poems appeared in 1972, and Harold Bloom called it the most distinguished book of American poetry since Wallace Stevens’s Collected Poems came out in the mid-1950s. It was ‘a major ...”