“... One of the few​ facts of American history of which Donald Trump appears to be aware is that George Washington owned slaves. Trump mentioned this in 2017 as one reason for his opposition to the removal of the monuments to Confederate generals that dot the southern landscape. In Trump’s view owning slaves probably enhances Washington’s reputation: like him, the first president knew how to make a buck ...”

“... couldn’t care less about showing herself in what would vulgarly be thought of as a favourable light. Her life before Connolly was a rackety business: a matter largely of frocks and lovers and food. It was the sort of life you could lead only if you had looks: and ‘Mrs Connolly,’ Maurice Bowra wrote to Ann Fleming, ‘is plainly a cup of tea at a high ...”

“... how it came into being. He takes as his motto ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ That is the title of a spirited 1973 polemic against creationism by one of the great evolutionary geneticists, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-75). The maxim suggests two ways of thinking about brains. One is implied directly: start at the ...”

“... in houses where there were grand pianos or interesting pebbles thoughtfully arranged to catch the light, it was an introduction not only to the work of particular painters and sculptors but an experience in itself, an idea about what art and life could be. It was a generously portable idea. A drab student room, you realised, could be improved with a few of ...”

“... less strange- Tho the face, still within it, Between glasses-place, over which time passes-a false light. In his introduction to the New Collected Works, Michael Davidson calls Discrete Series a ‘rather modest book’, but this is true only of its size. Andrew Crozier is surely right to say, in Modern American Poetry (1984), that it is ‘almost too ...”

“... Bryan Carsberg of Oftel smiles up in soft brown light as he dangles in the mirror on a green office wall. Michael Meyer of Emess Lighting is dissected by the blinds that cut across him and then reassembled from outside – his shirtsleeved figure looming like a target in the formulaic eye of some Hollywood assassin ...”

“... by the CIA and other agencies, a process known as ‘stovepiping’. This means that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz judge the veracity of reports from the field themselves (or with their staffers) without the information having first been ‘subjected to rigorous scrutiny’, and then rush the most damning reports into speeches, such as those ...”

“... put Xi and the WHO in their place. He sat in front of a blank blue screen in rimless glasses and a light grey suit, his hair slicked down 1950s-style, bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to the late Donald Pleasence.It took Azar, Donald Trump’s health secretary and a one-time ...”

“... I think there’s more to that argument than Jones allows. The attempts of a leader like Donald Trump to ban Muslims from entering the US, or to build a wall on the border with Mexico, are more about racism and identity than they are about economics or security. And by focusing on the geographical border, Jones neglects the way in which immigration ...”

“... is one of those poets who make the writing of poetry into the subject of the poems they write,’ Donald Davie noted with some scepticism. ‘The commonsense view is that this drastically limits the importance and interest of what they write; and I think this is true.’ But Graham could conceive nothing more important or interesting:To be always alone is ...”

“... other proxies, such as Israel and Iraq, though with little success. Giving Israel the green light to destroy the PLO led to the Lebanon debacle in 1982. Cynically supporting Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression against the mullahs in Tehran led to pointless slaughter. Each of these episodes opened a door through which US forces entered the region. In ...”

“... that you can’t take your eyes off him; everything he does is full of sleaze and interest. Donald Sutherland, by contrast, as the top military man who, off the record, confirms all of Garrison’s darkest and most far-reaching suspicions, merely oozes complacency: it is so satisfying to think your President has been murdered in a plot involving all the ...”

“... bluebells? There are further guest appearances by Proust, Freud, Virginia Woolf, Ramsay Mac Donald, Winston Churchill and other ‘stars’, and it is not every pair of Cockney youngsters who travel to France, as Amos and Zak do, in a laundry-basket full of General Haig’s underpants. All this is good fun, but the dialogue is sometimes inexcusably ...”

“... in the Lowlands and had been a schoolteacher before rising to the rank of major in the Highland Light Infantry during the Second World War. He was also a pillar of the Kirk. A glowering – and sometimes snide – authoritarianism was second nature to Ross, who ran Scotland in the manner of a brusque, no-nonsense dominie. His ignorant charges included most ...”

“... for Lockheed products) and head of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Another member was Donald Rumsfeld. Reappointed defence secretary by Bush in 2001, Rumsfeld paid tribute to Andrew Marshall and announced that he would effect ‘transformation’ on the Pentagon. This provoked resistance: the military leadership had no objection to receiving more ...”