“... of the Church’s wary attitude towards uncompromising Republicanism. In Portrait of the Artist Mr Casey asks: ‘Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of their country in 1829 in return for Catholic emancipation?’ Although Catholicism became the main carrier of Irish identity during the 19th century, there was always ambiguity as to whether ...”

“... side on the podium translating his words as he speaks, rubs shoulders with Jerzy Kosinski, John Lennon and Arthur Cohen.) The cast of other characters is often barely credible, a hint perhaps that there is invention and embellishment in the seeming straight-talk: Casey and Teddy, ‘a couple of clowns from the days ...”

“... will be Obama’s choice of Robert Gates as secretary of defence. Gates worked under William Casey, the director of the CIA at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal. His nomination by Ronald Reagan to head the CIA was thwarted by suspicions of his complicity in covert operations in Nicaragua. The elder Bush later renominated him and got him through. Gates ...”

“... seven billion. Two and a half billion adults don’t have a bank account. Paul Vigna and Michael Casey’s excellent book Cryptocurrency explains what that means:3 Somewhere in the order of five billion people belong to the households that are cut off from a financial system that the rest of us take for granted. They can’t start savings accounts. They ...”

“... have, I imagine, met those specifications. But the one who comes first to an American’s mind is John Dewey: a man whose engagement in primary and higher education, and whose active participation in politics, were considerably more extensive than Russell’s – and, I should argue, more focused, intelligent and useful. Dewey was the most prominent ...”

“... Administration. The great cult film of all time in this respect is George Axelrod’s and John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, withdrawn from circulation after the Kennedy assassination but now available again in cassette form. And the great artistic and emblematic coincidence of the movie is the playing of the good guy by Frank Sinatra ...”

“... telephone had become a casualty of some particularly dire financial emergency.I was examined by John Gowen, an Englishman with a small practice in Youghal, who drove up to Brook Lodge a couple of hours later. The epidemic had begun in July – polio was sometimes called the ‘summer plague’ – and he can’t have had much doubt about what the diagnosis ...”

“... Protestantism that had made too many compromises with the modern world. More than a decade later John Gray, disillusioned with Thatcherism, proposed post-liberalism as a new path; more important, the English Anglican (leaning heavily Anglo-Catholic) John Milbank radicalised the theological project, breaking with liberal ...”

“... except in such recherché musical circles as the coterie around Nadia Boulanger in Paris or by John Cage’s epigoni everywhere. Roldan, also a remarkable conductor, died of a skin cancer in the face in his early thirties. Cruelly deformed, in his last performances he had to climb the podium wearing a silk mask. Caturla, a country judge who used to compose ...”

“... is exactly what happened. Reagan re-installed such Nixon stalwarts as Haig, Shultz, Weinberger and Casey, while Ed Meese and Larry Speakes gave imitations of John Mitchell and Ron Ziegler which had all but the cognoscenti fooled. This time, however, there were no residual concessions to the Eastern Establishment – no ...”

“... Chief of Staff, has claimed that she influenced the sacking of Reagan’s campaign chairman, John Sears, in 1980; Larry Speakes has argued that she kept Lynn Nofzinger from becoming Press Secretary: while Donald Regan, the former Secretary of the Treasury, has accused her of a host of similar sins, including campaigning for the resignation of William ...”

“... of Calley taking the air outside the store, looking unaccountably like the late CIA chief William Casey. There is a chilling sighting of Calley’s comrade Vernado Simpson, who went to Vietnam a 19-year-old, and perpetrated 25 of the killings in My Lai less than four months later. He didn’t just despatch his victims, who included women and children: he also ...”

“... off the ground. This is a train you want to board, but like so many trains in American song, from Casey Jones’s Illinois Central 638 to the 16-coach cannonball in the Carter Family’s ‘Worried Man Blues’, it’s a train that could be easier to get on than get off.The train runs smoothly even as the rhythm pulls against itself: first stop San ...”

“... Elena Kagan, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the retiring Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in late June. Before she is confirmed by the committee, she will have to answer questions about her views on the constitution and her lack of judicial experience ...”

“... viewed with dismay the lack of restraint and caution in O’Donovan Rossa’s violent rhetoric. John Devoy, one of the leaders of Clan na Gael, the main Irish nationalist organisation in America, believed, as Kenna writes, that O’Donovan Rossa ‘had given the British ample warning of his plans through a desire for notoriety and theatricality, thus ...”