“... Grit and Glamour of an Icon’. She has interviewed more than 250 people, starting with the late John Warner (Taylor’s penultimate husband, a Republican senator) and her book reads like an extended feature for Vanity Fair. We learn that Bob Dylan adored her in Raintree County and that David Lynch kissed her after the 1987 Oscars (she was a fan of Blue ...”

“... in Syria. Last April, after an optimistic assessment of rebel progress by the secretary of state, John Kerry, in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘there’s a risk that this conflict has become stalemated.’ Dempsey’s initial view after 21 August was that a US strike on Syria – under ...”

“... tapped the movement with his promises of states’ rights, low taxes and a shrunken government in Washington; the ‘Reagan Democrats’ who crossed party lines to vote for him are still the most targeted demographic in the country. In 1992, Ross ‘Clean out the Barn’ Perot and his United We Stand America followers looked for a while as if they were going ...”

“... is a for-profit run by a military contractor, Caliburn International. The anti-immigrant zealot John Kelly – once considered the only ‘adult’ in the White House when he was chief of staff – joined Caliburn’s board immediately after leaving government.*In a televised interview with Vice President Pence, the host reads from an article about the ...”

“... to the challenges of high politics, or low politicians, and how Harvard and, even more important, Washington respond to Marvin, is the remainder of the story. There is some genial padding, and the whole thing is good fun, stylishly written and altogether civilised. Cyril Connolly is famous for having wanted to be the author of a totally civilised stylish ...”

“... Cheney, or at least converts him from a drunken gambler in Wyoming into a political hotshot in Washington DC. He’s been in trouble with the police twice, she says at the beginning, and once more would be too many. He’s never in that kind of trouble again, and even Dick himself recognises the power structure. When he and everyone else thinks he’s ...”

“... deregulation of higher education under George W. Bush, who appointed the Apollo Group’s chief Washington lobbyist, Sally Stroup, as assistant secretary for post-secondary education. But the boom proper began in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, which produced huge numbers of unemployed, unqualified people anxious to get their hands on the diplomas ...”

“... In the early 1950s I was awakened by the photographs of Walker Evans and the movies of John Ford, especially Grapes of Wrath where the poor ‘Okies’ go to California with mattresses on their cars rather than stay in Oklahoma and starve. I faced a sort of black-and-white cinematic identity crisis myself in this respect … a little like trading dust for oranges ...”

“... defender of the Bosnian cause, or at least its dedicated mourner. He has written a polemic against John Major’s Government and David Owen, the EU mediator in the remains of Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995, for their connivance in the ferocious dismantling of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is keen on Major’s New Labour successors, and confident that Tony Blair’s ...”

“... another party if it is to be more than assent. It happens within the heart (according to King John) but becomes consent only when it is declared. The word could mean, as now, agreement to a proposal, but Shakespeare’s plays reflect social conditions in which consent between lovers depends on the consent given by friends and family. As Petruchio tells ...”

“... it had been destroyed.As it turned out, however, there was much more to come. In the late 1970s, John Marks, a journalist who specialised in intelligence matters, filed a Freedom of Information request that uncovered a trove of 16,000 documents, most of which hadn’t been sent for shredding because they were filed as financial records. In the course of ...”

“... violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf. The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid ...”

“... a coup d’état. In collaboration with the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, they fashioned a Washington foreign policy consensus committed to armed intervention abroad, overt or covert, anywhere US intelligence agencies decided that American interests were somehow at stake. What had once been kept hidden was now paraded in public, as doctrines of regime ...”

“... seen by night and day, and amazing silhouettes of people, pumps and scaffolding. It’s as if John Ford had decided to start a western among the California oil rigs, and track his story up the West Coast to Puget Sound. The space around the people in this movie is so large and so unambiguously beautiful you have to wonder what story it is trying to ...”

“... exhibition we meet the equally awkward unfinished marble David from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, ingeniously placed before an opening so we can compare it with the earlier work. Its condition is best explained as a reflection of the ageing artist’s impatience with the character of carving, which allows no revisions. Neither marble has anything ...”