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“... at the periphery of Europe than it was to do so. The precise nature of each stage of the July Crisis, or of earlier crises, is less important to Tuchman’s cautionary tale than the dénouement: the failure of the great power blocs to negotiate their differences and the catastrophe that this failure unleashed. For the generation immediately following the ...”

“... the 1950s, but the British situation should be regarded as ‘one distinctive variant of a larger international pattern’. Germany, Russia, Italy and the United States, among others, share with Britain a set of habits and rhetorical conventions for discussing intellectuals. The term ‘intellectual’ has been passed down through modern history, even in ...”

“... so publicly to be wrong.2 That other factor might well be the same as the one identified by the International Monetary Fund earlier in the year. It concerns a technical economic factor called the multiplier, and that in turn involves us in a discussion of what GDP is and how the economy works. Imagine for a moment that you come across an unexpected ten ...”

“... ten years ago I found myself in a gloomy basement in Detroit talking to a small and very confused group of rather elderly men about Irish politics. They were the local chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the source of their confusion was Bernadette Devlin. Excited by media images of Bernadette on the barricades, hurling abuse (and more) at the ...”

“... submarine war’ implies the rejection of legal restraints that did not exist, for international law as yet had taken almost no note of the existence of submarines. The German submarine force was divided into different commands that followed different policies and operated different types of boat, but most of them were occupied with stopping ...”

“... becoming postmaster-general in March 1931. What transformed Attlee’s career was the financial crisis of 1931 and the estrangement of the fiscally orthodox MacDonald and his chancellor, Philip Snowden, from the rest of the party. Significantly, while other Labour ministers were wooed by MacDonald, he made no attempt to win over Attlee. In the 1931 general ...”

“... that there are many facilities around the world with the competence to manufacture novichoks. A group of Iranian scientists synthesised five variants in 2016 and published their results in the open literature. It is true that any of the twenty-odd laboratories accredited by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Warfare to test samples might, in ...”

“... The outcome has been rather different. The MSPs and the McConnell Executive face socio-economic crisis. There is now outright recession, following on from months when growth ran at a third of the UK level; most sectors are afflicted by structural malaise. Agriculture and fisheries, which have kept the place going since Skara Brae, are struggling with the ...”

“... China plummeted after Tiananmen, Africa offers Beijing a blank slate. As Zhang Xizhen, who teaches international relations at Beijing University, has said: ‘Threatened and actual economic sanctions and international political isolation jeopardised our opening up and reform process. [We had] to strengthen relations with our ...”

“... I had never been to one where the Communists had won power in a nationwide multi-party poll that international observers judged broadly free and fair. Moldova is unique. The old nomenklatura still rules half the former Soviet republics, from Central Asia to Azerbaijan and Belarus, not to mention Russia itself. But in the decade and a half since the USSR’s ...”

“... Thailand, once known as one of the most stable democracies in Asia, is in political and economic crisis. The scale and speed of the meltdown have been staggering. In 2001, I travelled in southern Thailand, through the three provinces near the Malaysian border. Most of the inhabitants there are Muslims, ethnically Malay people who speak their own dialect, and ...”

“... provision. Last summer, it was reported that the number of urgent referrals to mental health crisis teams had reached 3500 a month, three times higher than in 2019. Anyone working in children’s services or education will be familiar with the problems of young people who find it nearly impossible to leave the house, go to school or campus, or speak in ...”

“... Khamenei has managed to some extent to continue his predecessor’s policy of balancing one group against another, and making sure that no single side gains too much power. On becoming Supreme Leader, he put away his pipe – which smacked too much of the Western intellectual – and cultivated the clerics who administer the major religious ...”

“... has been remarkably frank about his vision of the future. He believes that the global financial crisis has shown the weakness of the liberal democratic model: ‘I don’t think that our European Union membership precludes us from building an illiberal new state based on national foundations.’ His government talks about Christian roots, patriotism, the ...”

“... and voted 15 to one for the 26 July Movement. Their independence did not survive long, but the group of intellectuals around Franqui fought on for years after it was clear that their cause was lost, and that the Cuban revolution was to take the form of a Sovietic party-state rather than a ‘leftist’ popular democracy. In part, they could carry on ...”