“... feeling that this is so – one medical blogger quoted by Carr laments, ‘I can’t read War and Peace any more.’ The digerati are not impressed by such avowals. ‘No one reads War and Peace,’ responds Clay Shirky, a digital-media scholar at New York University. ‘The reading public has increasingly decided that ...”

“... but as heroic underdogs. They were shown on television being shot and beaten by Israeli soldiers. David the good guy was now a Palestinian, and nasty Goliath an Israeli. The women and the old joined in to support the uprising, and all were soon aware that the use of stones rather than guns was their strongest political card in the vital game to win the ...”

“... Cashell. Setting off in November 1801, they, like many other Britons, were taking advantage of the peace brought by the Treaty of Amiens to see for themselves the country of which they had heard and read such lurid accounts. Off they went, gentry and servants: ‘Lord and Lady Mount Cashell, Helena Jane and me pack’d in the Family Coach, with Mary ...”

“... and Thomas Pringle, all now catapulted into the Dáil with a mandate to disturb the political peace. While the Fianna Fáil aristocracy were punching their cards at local meetings and stealthily ascending the party ladder, these newcomers spent their time debating the relevance of Trotsky’s transitional programme or stomping round the Occupied ...”

“... may want to withdraw troops from Iraq but its leaders outdo each other in condemning Iran. General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, has accused Iran of being behind the latest fighting in Baghdad and Basra. He admitted during his appearance before Congress on 8 April that any improvement in security is fragile. Over the last few months, Iraq has ...”

“... from murder to involuntary manslaughter. She promised justice to Gray’s parents and pleaded for peace so that she could do her work. Her press conference was as swift as it was bold. When someone dies in their custody, the Maryland police are not required to say anything until ten days later, a law that has been widely criticised by local politicians. Mosby ...”

“... of books, for those who want it gone, so that there’s no difference in weight between War and Peace and Horrid Henry’s Nits. There are plenty of readers who enjoy a long book, but no one wants a big book as such. When in the 1960s the artist David Nash bought a chapel in Blaenau Ffestiniog, at the time the cheapest ...”

“... to Hades – a detail I learned not from Briggs’s notes, but from an account of the poem by David Trotter.No doubt conscious of the fact that Paris has been reissued several times and failed to gain a wider readership, the new edition arrives with reinforcements. The Briggs commentary comes in at about three times the length of the poem ...”

“... move from the Chairmanship of the ITA to the Chairmanship of the BBC: an event described by David Attenborough as like Rommel taking command of the Eighth Army. The truth of this whole matter may, I suppose, be indefinitely hidden among rival conjectures, for it is evident from Tracey’s account that at least one person who should know how and why ...”

“... have consistently displayed a capacity for division of counsel and confusion of purpose in which David Steel would have felt thoroughly at home at any time. ‘An ill-organised miscellany of view-points’ is how Paul Addison, in The Road to 1945, describes it from 1916 on. Or as Neville Chamberlain wrote in his diary for 19 October 1935, ‘our party is ...”

“... for two truckloads of grade B Seville oranges.’ Inge, an actress and a prominent figure in the peace movement, fetched a higher price under the Freikauf system, ‘the selling of dissident flesh for goods or hard currency’ by the GDR to West Germany. But the chain of events that made Stefan into a ‘dissident poet’ fixated on America was set in motion ...”

“... a light aircraft to trail a banner reading ‘Kremlin sends Kongratulations’ over the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common, wrote to the Financial Times: ‘When Conservative MPs met to consider forming the coalition after the general election, the renewal of Trident was listed as a Conservative commitment, which the Liberals accepted … Now we find ...”

“... or simply informative they were generally more stoical than bellicose and often humorous. David Welch’s account is based on the Central Office of Information archive in the British Library, with occasional excursions beyond it, and he considers a wide range of material. It was in the summer of 1939, when war seemed inevitable, that a propaganda ...”

“... In the extracts from David Stockman’s memoirs published on Monday 14 April by Newsweek, Reagan’s former Budget Director spoke of the mediocrities, charlatans and power-hungry politicos who cluster around the disturbingly vague and incompetent Great Communicator. For them, Stockman said, ‘reality-time’ was the seven o’clock evening news on television ...”

“... behind the German lines. He did so in the Special Air Service regiment, newly founded by Colonel David Stirling, and engaged in some lively rough shooting among the enemy encampments. At one point he was very close to Rommel. There was a crack Greek Sacred Squadron and it was the obvious unit to join next. Eventually he saw the shattering of the Mareth Line ...”