“... of the inspector general’. In his just published memoirs, Bremer dwells on infighting within George Bush’s cabinet and his claim that he tried and failed to get the number of US troops in Iraq increased. Bremer also says that he ‘realised there would be corruption at many levels of Iraqi society in the months and years to come. But I also hoped that ...”

“... local council building in Saronikou, a cluster of settlements just beyond the edge of Athens’s urban sprawl. The council’s spiffy new building is elegant, light and spacious, all marble floors and veneered partitions. The mayor, Petros Filippou, an amiable veteran of local politics, has the patriarchal desk set-up I saw so many times in former Soviet ...”

“... of fortified zones or limites, called ‘interior’ (more remote) and ‘exterior’ (nearer to urban settlements). Luttwak, I’m convinced, was entirely correct in thinking that all this could not have happened by accident or in response to crises in different places at different times. In The Limits of Empire (1990), the most important work on Roman ...”

“... with the construction of fortifications and military highways in the Highlands begun under George Wade in the 1720s and 1730s. On Roy’s detailed maps, the past and present were visibly united in one imperial enterprise. The close connection between conquest and civility suggested by the (Roman and Hanoverian) subjugation of Scotland was not always ...”

“... famous son is puzzling. Despite the rise in Mackintosh’s reputation, Glasgow contrived to plan urban motorways which threatened both his Martyrs’ and Scotland Street Schools. In 1950, the Corporation had been encouraged to buy the lease of the Ingram Street Tea Rooms with its varied set of interiors designed for Kate Cranston which, had it ...”

“... they live in community, but unlike them they pursue their mission out on the streets. Friars are urban types, while monks are mostly rural. Their original aim was to liberate theology from the cloisters and colleges so it could become what this book calls ‘a multi-tasking practice in the streets’. Dominicans in particular combine preaching and ...”

“... unfavourably to the Mississippi Valley, which had allowed a harmonious civil society to take root. George Kennan, who did visit South America, used what he imagined to be the natural violence of the Amazon basin as a metaphor for the dismal history of Spanish and Portuguese America, especially its disastrous racial intermixing: ‘The handicaps to ...”

“... articulated. But the novel doles out enough information early on about Smith’s background as an urban adventurer to prevent him from moving with the stiffness of someone concealing large surprises up his sleeve. Any loss of flow and naturalness gets recouped in compound ironies, especially when it comes to Oakeshott’s production of Cato, a creaky verse ...”

“... and gentry every year’. In December 1797, a belief in divine control of human events led George III to order a general thanksgiving for recent British naval victories. One preacher who took part thanked God for whipping up a gale at a key moment, thereby thwarting a Dutch landing of ten thousand men on the coast of Scotland. No doubt he convinced his ...”

“... germane to their investigation and must be exhaustively scrutinised before being ruled out. George Eliot talked about the human need to filter, lest madness ensue: ‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the ...”

“... old and the young, the educated and the less educated, the metropolitan and the provincial, the urban and the rural. The two main parties increasingly resemble loose coalitions of different interest and identity groups, each with its own axe to grind, and primarily united by their dislike and distrust of the people on the other side. Our two-party system is ...”

“... 81 seconds of their beating of King had been videotaped by a resident in a nearby apartment, George Holliday. What Holliday did with the tape was momentous. He did not hand it over to the Police. Had he done so, there would have been an internal tribunal, and most likely some stern disciplinary action. There might also have been judicial control over the ...”

“... the villages of Western Europe and the United States gradually becomes that of retail outlets for urban raiders in search of ‘antiques’, it is understandable that Nazi ‘antiques’ should become up-market commodities. Few other objects make so wide a variety of emotional appeals. They are associated with strange, dramatic events, with great personal ...”

“... the major cities. Even as late as the 1960s, Irish county associations flourished in the American urban environment: Boston, New York and San Francisco had separate groupings of this kind for emigrants from each of Ireland’s 32 counties. This formidable presence was backed up both by the Ancient Order of Hibernians (which was a largely church-linked ...”

“... their own sacred topography. The driving force was the cult of martyrs and the building of urban churches to contain their relics. It set in motion a long process by which Catholic Christianity would construct a new geography of the sacred. By the later Middle Ages, the European landscape was dotted with thousands of churches, chapels and ...”