“... this is simple paucity of evidence, aggravated by the untrustworthiness of much of the testimony we do have. As Hampson says on page one of his book, ‘two hundred years later the historian finds himself in front of a locked door to which there is no key.’ There are at least three ways in which it might be possible to write more compellingly about ...”

“... have hamstrung recovery. An official of the Foreign Ministry told me in Hanoi last year: ‘We have changed our attitude. The Americans dropped so many bombs – as we say, enough for everyone to have a crater on each shoulder. But now we want normalisation without conditions, which ...”

“... authoritarian regimes who keep both radical Islamists and liberal democrats at bay. When George Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq they promoted the idea that the West was facing a worldwide jihadi threat led by al-Qaida. The global war on terror was against a single enemy: radical Islam. At first, each manifestation of that threat was attacked ...”

“... of the Kurds. The US faces the same dilemma in Iraq and Syria today as it did after 9/11 when George Bush declared the war on terror. It was known then that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Osama bin Laden was a Saudi and the money for the operation came from Saudi donors. But the US didn’t want to pursue al-Qaida at the expense of its relations ...”

“... weapons. Had UTN made a similar offer to al-Qaida? Or was there some other reason for the meeting? We’re told in Ron Suskind’s The One Per Cent Doctrine (2006) that Cheney cut through all the talk about indications and probabilities: ‘If there’s a one per cent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear ...”

“... on its own risks inviting it to abandon the Kurds again – as they did in 1975 and 1991, when George Bush senior, having called on the Kurds and the Shias to rise up and overthrow their dictator, suddenly permitted Saddam to crush their rebellion with his air force. The Kurds have a Kurdish interest, more than an Iraqi one, in Mosul. Protecting Mosul ...”

“... perspectives. It seems heroically optimistic to expect new institutions to avoid these problems. We may regret the failure of political globalisation to keep pace with economic globalisation, but political globalisation can’t be achieved by decree, and it would be more sensible to seek reforms that could increase well-being without requiring nations to ...”

“... voice reached every cranny of the great hall as his speech boomed into its grand finale. ‘We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: you shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns.’ Bryan grabbed at his temples and buckled his knees under the agony of the imagined thorns and from this pained crouch ...”

“... out in giant letters of grey bricks set into the brown grass. It was a Tuesday morning, and we were on the way to see Donald Trump address an arena full of New Hampshire residents at Great Bay Community College on the outskirts of Portsmouth. On the radio the former Colorado senator and disgraced 1984 presidential candidate Gary Hart was saying that ...”

“... George Saunders – whose semi-official website carries a reminder that the man who played Addison DeWitt in All about Eve was called George SANDERS – was born in Chicago in 1958. A schoolteacher got him interested in literature, but having been exposed at an impressionable age to the novels of Ayn Rand he ended up studying geophysical engineering: ‘I didn’t want to be one of those life-sucking parasitic artists,’ he recalled last year ...”

“... round the grape hyacinths as though they were on fire and squeezed his way along behind the lilac bush, past cobwebs and worms, until he burst out fiercely into the space behind the hedge. She was being forced to walk the plank. He leaped into the ocean and cantered sternly across the waves. This is a prelapsarian garden full of mantraps, with the smallest ...”

“... to withdrawal in Vietnam was meant to ‘neutralise’ supporters of the Southern Democrat George Wallace, who was trying to get the 1972 nomination. If Nixon pulled out too quickly, he warned, Wallace’s 13 per cent of the 1968 vote – he had run as an independent candidate on a segregationist ticket and split the right-wing vote – could balloon ...”

“... nor so devoted to Shakespeare as a legitimate prince, to judge by the current heir to the throne.) We have heard all too many earnest pronouncements, including a correspondence in the London Review, in recent months, as if these alone could determine the future place of Shakespeare in the educational and cultural life of the nation. What a relief then, to come ...”

“... own.     *Dead Centre, 1858Exactly halfway through his life, panning easton Princes Street, George Washington Wilson stoppedthe moving world into focus. After long exposure,ghosts returned to their bodies. Calton Hill roseat the top of the frame, the grave-slots of the cemeterya perfect memento. The first snapshot. Steady traffic.     *Atget Comes ...”

“... by the trickster hero of his last novel Illywhacker. For one thing, it’s a family history, and we’re all of us secretly stunned by the coincidences which have resulted, against the odds, in our existence. And the narrator’s account of his great-grandfather, the Reverend Oscar Hopkins, is, by any standards, a weird one. It begins in Devon, with a ...”