“... So there are gorgeous pictures: Truman Capote dancing with Tuesday Weld at Dunne’s black and white ball; Warren Beatty, scrawny, bespectacled, hunched over a piano; Tony Curtis and Belden Katleman (a Las Vegas gentleman) at a wedding, looking like Corleones. There are also fearsome glimpses of melodrama, or worse – a ...”

“... background as you reach for a shelf of cashmere sweaters, or see your food approaching on a big white plate. In Manchester these days, such pretend utopias are part of the landscape. Moderately prosperous people, and those who would like to be, can spend wet Saturdays as if they were in Milan or Madrid, consuming and coffee-sipping and practising their ...”

“... despite its high Scottish representation, began to be alarmed about England’s reaction. Tony Blair announced that two referendums – one general, one on the taxing powers of the Scottish Parliament – would be held following a White Paper, but before a Bill was introduced into the Commons. This was a bold ...”

“... voice in the Wilson and Callaghan years of Labour government, a time not only of the notorious ‘white heat of technology’ but of huge expansion and transformative innovation in higher and further education. Unlike other academic historians, he actually changed the institutions and practices of his country, as well as emitting a cataract of written history ...”

“... to dwarf the Twin Towers. Looking down at the streets below, you could see lines of sailors in white uniforms looking like trains of ants weaving their way into the city. My desk was in a booth by a low wall that separated me from John’s secretary, the formidable RoseMarie Terenzio. John depended on no one more than RoseMarie. ‘Here’s the ...”

“... in 1989, it has fielded a force of at least five hundred men, under a core of mostly South African white officers, against rebel groups in west and southern Africa, using light armoured vehicles, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Despite higher casualties than it had hoped, it has made a good showing. Above all, it has taken political and military ...”

“... in the Palestinian case, a homeland for the resolution of its exile since 1948. But, as Hayden White has noted in a seminal article, ‘narrative in general, from the folk tale to the novel, from annals to the fully realised “history”, has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.’1 Now there are numerous UN ...”

“... and owner of a farm in nearby Franschhoek, who also attended the conference, the question for the white beneficiaries of apartheid is ‘how we had sort of got away with it’ (not the outcome he personally had sought: over the past 17 years he has tried to establish a new racially inclusive model of land distribution). In fact, the story told in My Father ...”

“... discovery of the Romantic poets continues to be made. What Coleridge put in a notebook – the white dung of a hawk falling from the sky, the shadows cast on urine by candlelight – could and can go into poetry, along with the wasp trying to get out of the window, a menstrual problem, buying veal, what a husband thought the wife said, what she felt he ...”

“... date, CBS aired An Oprah Special: The Presleys – Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley. Dressed all in white, Oprah and Riley sat down on pristine white armchairs in Graceland’s sunny living room, with its stained-glass windows of peacocks and Elvis’s white grand piano in the ...”

“... hopes were still pinned, was a comfort here. So was Harold Wilson’s idea (later taken up by Tony Blair) that Britain’s past imperial experience gave her unique tools and skills that could still be used to solve world problems; Britain was said to possess cultural sensitivities, for example, that the US conspicuously lacked. Attlee, too, thought the ...”

“... for these dashing chaps, who, while they had the insouciant air of fighter pilots, sought the white rather than the right stuff. The cocaine literature of the era reflected these attitudes: Robert Sabbag’s Snowblind (1976) was a gonzo-inflected account of how one man, Zachary Swan, single-handedly turned southern California onto coke; and while ...”

“... several times in Ben Affleck’s 2012 historical spy thriller, Argo. Based on the memoir by Tony Mendez, a CIA agent, the movie depicts the covert rescue of six US embassy workers caught up in the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis; the CIA used a fake film-shoot – of a schlocky sci-fi story called ‘Argo’ – as cover for spiriting the diplomats out ...”

“... swords against their plastic shields. But the biggest cheer by far came the night after when Tony Hadley arrived to sing Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’. Hadley, the Thatcherite singer in an otherwise left-leaning band, was holding a glass of Jack Daniels. He seemed in touch with his audience and every bit as drunk. I’m not sure whether the audience knew ...”

“... pirating of Bevan’s phrase ‘In place of fear’ for Barbara Castle’s industrial relations White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’ was for many the last straw.) As Bevan’s biographer, Foot kept the faith alive, and eventually his twenty selfless years as High Priest were considered sufficient qualification for the leadership. Whether Bevan, if he could ...”