“... a bad look). In between, the denunciation of the ‘Unabomber’, Ted Kaczynski, by his brother David in 1996 made many Americans uneasy: against the undoubted ‘good’ of catching a terrorist was the ‘bad’ of snitching on his own family, something uncomfortably close to the Pavlik Morozov story. Then, in 1998, came the scandal of Monica Lewinsky’s ...”

“... the heavens opened for her, a gigantic parrot hovering above her head.’ The control of tone is vital. Imagine the technical difficulty of a story in which a badly-stuffed bird with a ridiculous name ends up standing in for one third of the Trinity, and in which the intention is neither satirical, sentimental nor blasphemous. Imagine further telling such a ...”

“... for a new birth. The two parties of her title are ‘old’ Labourism, on the one hand, and a vital, vibrant new party which is emerging ‘subterraneanly’, to use the equally new adjective that she herself favours – a presumed coalition of women, blacks, CND, left-wing councils and so forth. What she clearly foresees is a complete takeover of the ...”

“... crucially important defence portfolio in addition to the premiership, and gave foreign affairs to David Levy, who broke away from the Likud to join the One Israel alliance. A former construction worker of Moroccan origin, Levy speaks no English and it was no doubt thought that his notorious indolence would allow Barak the latitude he wanted to conduct his own ...”

“... or traditional archive cannot cope. But the human mind can, if properly programmed. Literature is vital to that reprogramming. Powers is fond of the Emily Dickinson poem which he uses as epigraph to Galatea 2.2: The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will contain With ease and you beside. For Powers, the novel allows ...”

“... Roma in 1955. That ballet, he wrote, was ‘something you may live with the dancers, a vital, social, exhausting, and vivacious exchange between you and them, like trying to keep up with an exciting conversation in a foreign language.’ The experience carried throughout, he added, ‘an undercurrent of poignancy and regret, the inexplicable ...”

“... adopted it in a decorous shape for his longest and most ambitious work, The Moralists. David Hume, whom Diderot befriended in Paris in the 1760s, used it to scandalously sceptical effect in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, unpublishable until after his death. Diderot’s most famous work is a dialogue: Rameau’s Nephew, in which a ...”

“... to the alienation of public opinion, as well as harming investment and offending donors. Vital social services languished (or were provided by Hamas or NGOs), while the PA lavished money on cars, apartments and travel for its senior cadres. Equally serious was the failure of the Palestinian Legislative Council, elected in January 1996 at the same ...”

“... Hemingway marathon, to the fling with James Gavin (hero of the 82nd Airborne), to the affair with David Gurewitsch in Cuernavaca, even the marriage to Tom Matthews in 1954 that made her so ‘plain silly happy’ at first: You see, I have chalked it up too well, and see where and how I am caught – and how tightly. Through ignorance, carelessness, pride and ...”

“... with the ferocity of Ford’s detractors (they seem to close their eyes to watch his films), but David Thomson makes a mighty-seeming case against him in his Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema. From the 1975 edition: Ford’s male chauvinism believes in uniforms, drunken candour, fresh-faced little women (though never sexuality), a gallery of supporting ...”

“... January, they have been managed by a new Task Force Europe, led by Johnson’s chief negotiator, David Frost, a burly, acerbic diplomat, one of the few in the Foreign Office who has always loathed the EU. Frost’s conversations with Michel Barnier have become openly bitter and recriminatory, in a way not seen before. Frost is backed up by contemptuous ...”

“... opponent was saying exhibited the profound conviction of his own beliefs. Did not the poet King David say: ‘Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward and put to confusion, that desire my hurt’? Individualism, bordering on eccentricity, even to the extent of ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’, has ...”

“... ahead with the massive project on the basis of the reports of the MAUD Committee and secured the vital collaboration of the Canadians in uranium isotope separation using the gaseous diffusion method. He had directed British scientists not to tell the Americans about calculations done in Birmingham early in 1940 by the émigré physicists Otto Frisch and ...”

“... written and of a balls-aching boredom.’ In 1960 he found something he did like. He announced to David Selznick that ‘a delightful book’ called To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was ‘going to be a great success’. He himself, he wrote, was the model for the character Dill, being a childhood friend of the author’s. The first letter in Too Brief a ...”

“... Palmerston in the notorious case of Don Pacifico, which Rodger only mentions in passing. David Pacifico was a merchant of Portuguese-Jewish descent, who enjoyed British citizenship by virtue of being born in Gibraltar. He had various dodgy claims against the Greek government, which Pam decided to uphold by instructing Parker (again) to blockade ...”