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“... Jocelyn has known or worked with. There is music that has been specially composed, a poem by Tony Harrison, the theme of which is all the toasts he and Jocelyn have drunk together in all the various places where they have worked around the world. They’re due to set off on Monday on another epic journey, the script, based on the Prometheus legend, is ...”

“... policy. His very presence questions the special relationship with the US that under Thatcher and Blair became the equivalent, in the phrase coined by John Lanchester, of the ‘“coital lock” which makes it impossible to separate dogs during sex’. Hence the absurd question relating to nuclear buttons that TV journalists are now putting to Corbyn’s ...”

“... last, of course they want to be rid of the weak and wily Major, of course they would prefer to see Blair as prime minister. But this is the politics of pis aller, the grim strategy of the better ’ole, the weary realism of second-best options. The point hardly needs labouring that the old-time religion of socialism, which was good enough for generations of ...”

“... atmosphere reflected national reactions as a whole. There was none of the jubilation surrounding Blair’s arrival in Downing Street, however forced much of that may have been. The election campaign itself was in part responsible for the absence of excitement. Avoiding any sharp challenges or radical commitments, Gerhard Schröder promised no more than a ...”

“... it was Dole who proposed a tax cut, risking a deficit increase to stimulate growth. In Europe, Tony Blair is only the most blatant among today’s party leaders of the left in his disdain for poor people and other losers, his overwhelming desire to sup at the table of financial success, and his contempt for the broad mass of working stiffs with small ...”

“... this would not have struck American public opinion as a plausible casus belli. (Did anyone tell Tony Blair about the Syrian objective?) After the toppling of Saddam’s statues in Baghdad in April, however, the Bush Administration turned its attention to perhaps the real objective of the war: Syria. With American forces in Baghdad, Perle continued his ...”

“... last years in power. Showered with accolades – ‘the smartest leader I think I ever met’ (Tony Blair); ‘none is more impressive’ (George H.W. Bush) – his rule became erratic. He was frustrated by the absence of a spirit of entrepreneurship among his people and as a solution, proposed a eugenics campaign. The migrant working-class population ...”

“... and appreciation of modern writers in that language as well as in the Classical tongues. Hugh Blair, a Church of Scotland minister who from 1762 became Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Edinburgh University, was in effect the world’s first Professor of English Literature. He built his lectures on Smith’s work. Smith held that ‘we in this ...”

“... of which, Sequence, he co-founded with Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. Along with Anderson and Tony Richardson, Reisz aimed to bring a version of auteurism to British film, and they did as much with the documentary movement Free Cinema. In 1959, Reisz directed We Are the Lambeth Boys, and he made his first feature film a year later, Saturday Night and ...”

“... competition and the bottom line? In fact, as Leys and Player show, it was the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that began replacing the public components of the NHS with private ones, the effect concealed by large spending increases, long before Lansley and Cameron took charge. If the Conservatives and their Liberal allies are dismantling ...”

“... expensive ways for Labour not to think about this reality. The elections also provoked another of Tony Blair’s near-weekly ‘rare interventions’ in British politics, with a smattering of TV interviews based on an essay in the New Statesman. Blair’s retainers dutifully lauded the essay: David Miliband, the king ...”

“... belong to a tradition that stretches back to Labour’s beginnings (this could never be said of Tony Blair’s). Those who adopt this view would do better just to come out with what they actually mean, which is that it was only in the 1990s, under Blair, that the Labour Party finally found its perfect form. But it ...”

“... modernising despots, insisted as late as 2008.Inspired by Thatcher and right-wing US think tanks, Tony Blair pushed state policy and public attitudes in Britain closer to the notion that welfare is a problem rather than the solution. Over the last decade, successive Conservative governments have ruthlessly shredded what was left of the social safety net ...”

“... the Queen and Gordon Brown before having a cheering conscience-free get-together with his old mate Tony Blair. And here are the helicopters flying over Regent’s Park to prove it. 26 June, Espiessac. I sit in the wicker rocking-chair in the shade of the willow by the pool. Except that I’m slightly pestered by insects it’s an ideal situation, with the ...”

“... up and down as the heavyweight arm-twisting pays off, the celebrity assaults, camera-kissing by Blair and Beckham: we get the Games on 6 July 2005. Then the shock of a traumatised London the following morning, death toll rising, dazed survivors captured on mobile phones as they stumble through smoke-filled, soft-focus tunnels. Bomb carriers looped on ...”