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“... 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 ...”

“... flourish within the union. There was no need at all for a Scottish parliament. What would a white elephant like that do for Scotland that couldn’t be done in private? Much better, surely, to have a fierce Scot in the cabinet who, in return for doing the prime minister’s bidding, was indulged in his demands, however outrageous, for cross-border ...”

“... him write them. I looked at filmed interviews, including I forget how many hours of out-takes from Tony Palmer’s film Aspects of Stravinsky. I soon realised that, in order to weigh up what I was hearing, I needed to know something about the speakers’ relationships with the composer and those around him, which was precisely what I was trying to find out by ...”

“... faith and would live another 25 years. Betjeman sits most comfortably alongside the Goons or Tony Hancock, quirky depressives of the wireless age whose voices speak to a disenchanted, disconnected world, laughing it all off until the red light in the studio goes out. Betjeman, his name apart, was utterly, balefully English in everything except his hatred ...”

“... Thatcherism continues to cast its long shadow over British politics. At the general election Tony Blair explicitly claimed to be moving beyond Thatcherism and William Hague implicitly claimed to be moving back to it. During the campaign it was difficult to be sure what image best captured the brooding presence of the eponymous Lady ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... creatively accounted.) I slightly got to know Gingrich’s press spokesman, a raffish Brit named Tony Blankley who chain-smoked in defiance of all regulations, kept a good table and had given up a promising career as a child-actor when he got too chubby. (‘My last movie was also Humphrey Bogart’s last movie.’) Just before the 1992 Presidential ...”

“... and safer, especially for America and Israel’. He is given a shrunken skull and ‘exceptionally white teeth’; Franzen goes to some lengths to deny him a name: it is clear we are approaching the heart of darkness. It’s worth quoting his exchange with Joey across a packed dinner table: ‘We have to learn to be comfortable with stretching some ...”

“... family doctor, Bob Boothby and Father Christmas all rolled into one. He was stout and beaming with white hair and bushy white eyebrows. He wore a black jacket and a waistcoat, and striped trousers like a faithful old family retainer, or Lord Reith. Ronnie knew how to fix anything – tickets for the Cup Final, a box at ...”

“... an Iraqi woman living in Kuwait I met when I was here a few weeks ago. She thinks I look like Tony Blair, which I do not, but she thinks it anyway. I drive to her flat, navigating by map and mobile. She is wearing a white tracksuit. She has painted the walls of her flat an apricot colour. She leaves the door open. We ...”

“... the assumption that full participation in society required acceptance of the norms set by straight white males. Yet even as the public sphere grew more inclusive, the boundaries of permissible debate were narrowing. Critiques of concentrated power, imperial or plutocratic, became less common. Indeed, the preoccupation with racial and gender identity has ...”

“... The righteous Harry Wharton, of course, joined the Labour Party, under the name of David Owen or Tony Benn, and screwed the whole thing up with public-school Character and Leadership. These Frank Richard types could have been recognised at our ordinary day-schools but (such is the gang spirit) we liked to think that they were essentially products of the ...”

“... this was outrageous and he was going to accept the challenge of the Sunday Times. In order to kill Tony Howard’s new job he forbade any of us to speak to him. Uncharacteristically, Crossman did not follow this entry with any comment or aside, and the remainder of the six-year narrative does not include any ‘off the record’ meetings with his ...”

“... Queen’s English that deliberately celebrates the sort of cultures where dialect is spoken. Tony Harrison does this when he harnesses his Classical learning and tones to write about working-class life in Leeds (he also uses straight dialect); Douglas Dunn does it when he writes in Northlight with Marvellian decorum about Tayport; Les Murray when he ...”