“... that the region probably contained huge oil reserves and that the Royal Navy would require oil, Lloyd George told his French opposite number, Clemenceau, that he wanted Mosul; Clemenceau provisionally agreed. The deal finally went through in 1926 and Syria lost this territory too, as well as the prospect of significant oil wealth; Mosul and its population ...”

“... order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium’.) As Lloyd George’s minister of munitions in the later stages of the First World War, Churchill was a forceful advocate of all kinds of new military technologies: submarines, zeppelins and especially tanks, originally known as ‘land ironclads’ (another idea ...”

“... leave the wishful thinking to the other team. Some of Clough’s protégés were a bit fat, like John Robertson, or a bit clumsy, like Larry Lloyd; Mourinho’s are all lean and mean. But fat or thin, neither manager would ever let any of his players start to believe their own publicity. Both have consistently wanted their ...”

“... dead.Netanyahu’s American enablers – Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin – swiftly echoed the Israeli prime minister’s celebration of Nasrallah’s death. Never mind that Netanyahu hadn’t consulted them about the bombing, which made a mockery of the American and French push for a ceasefire between Israel and ...”

“... Insurance Act. GPs, fearing state control of their practices and therefore bitterly opposed to Lloyd George’s plans, were bought off by generous payments, based on the number of patients on their lists. The new service flourished. By 1945, two-thirds of GPs and 21 million people (half the population) had signed up to this scheme. Hospital ...”

“... eggs and hothouse grapes and peaches. There were pink roses and white daisies on the table. John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America, and his young new wife, Madeleine, were on their honeymoon. The 46-year-old mining magnate Ben Guggenheim was having dinner in the rococo dining room with his latest mistress, Ninette, a 24-year-old cabaret singer he ...”

“... and years!’ The bouncy tone is explained by this being a fantasy of what Baker might say to John Updike in the unlikely event of their finding themselves playing a round of golf together. It was the sure convergence of apparent incompatibles that gave The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) its impact, even for readers who found William Beckwith, the studly ...”

“... possible without its layers and hyperlinks, the infinite opportunities it opens for research: on John Amos Comenius, for example, whose idea of ‘pansophism … a dream of information available to everyone’ she discusses as a precursor to ‘Wikipedia, which I admire and support’. In The Books of Jacob, the news about the mycelial origins of the world ...”

“... pay enough attention to the spiritual dimension of human existence. As the theologian Vincent Lloyd put it, Mbembe sees popular religiosity as a site where ‘power relations are navigated or contested.’ Christianity wasn’t just the religion introduced by colonialism and adopted by African elites to discipline their subjects. In the hands of the ...”

“... model galleon sat on a table. Photos of him meeting foreign dignitaries were framed on the wall: John McCain, Vladimir Putin, Jens Stoltenberg.Đukanović stared at me intently during our conversation; a fat watch slid up and down his left wrist as he spoke. ‘Serbia always thought of us as the annoying little rock in their shoe,’ he said, explaining that ...”

“... and they were numerous, included both Fitzgeralds, the New York society hostess Muriel Draper, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Nancy Mitford, Dawn Powell, even Mary McCarthy, whose rivalrousness towards other intellectual women is legendary. The fact that Murphy seems to have been one of the kindliest people on earth no doubt only magnified her ...”

“... great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I’ll be spending a lot more time there’ (Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs). ‘It never entered my mind that populism would defeat capitalism in its country of origin’ (Jürgen Habermas). ‘Perhaps the British have to go in order that one day they may properly return’ (Jochen Buchsteiner, Frankfurter ...”

“... That’s what he said without prompting, and on the Wednesday evening he had a conversation with John Barradell, the City of London’s extremely well-connected town clerk. Barradell has what you might call a leading interest in the operations of London Resilience, the set of protocols that go into action during a major emergency in the capital. At this ...”