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“... ways to the Hayward (or across town to the Serpentine Gallery, where an epochal exhibition of Anthony Caro is brewing, as if to complement it and demonstrate how various the subject and the Arts Council are), concerns the real present content of the act of devotion and insight in which the professionals of the Arts Council, known with a happy irony, which ...”

“... way into the pockets of rulers such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Capital flight – back to the West – is a typical symptom of the disease of foreign aid. Even if aid money is targeted at peaceful development, the income simply allows governments to spend the money they save on weapons or graft. Various elements of Hancock’s argument are familiar to ...”

“... which had carried their flimsy caravels to the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores and down the West African coast, had begun to demonstrate how much might be gained from maritime expansion. The Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, had reluctantly agreed to finance the ever importuning Columbus, in the hope of securing for themselves some of the ...”

“... Like most biographers, Anthony Masters starts by announcing his subject’s date of birth; unlike most biographers, he gets it wrong. Charles Henry Maxwell Knight was born on 9 July 1900, not 4 September, under the sign of Cancer, not Virgo, however tempting it may be, for reasons which become clear in the course of the story, to assign him to the latter ...”

“... cultural facts. Seeley in 1883 talks about England ‘expanding’ to reach its Victorian stature; Anthony Low, in 1983, of England ‘contracting’, in the second Elizabethan age, to become again a minor power on the flank of Europe. Popular sentiment and historical scholarship cling to this leavened loaf theory of a Celtic-Roman-German-Norse-Norman people ...”

“... London which they claimed were importing ‘bush meat’, including chimpanzee and bush rat, from West Africa. They also announced that some dealers were trading in substances used in witchcraft, which might include body parts. Heathrow’s meat transport director, Clive Lawrence, was sure of it. ‘The intelligence we are receiving suggests human flesh is ...”

“... its major European rivals. In 1715, when the Empire embraced large areas of North America and the West Indies, coastal settlements in India and vital outposts in the Mediterranean, its Army was no larger than the King of Sardinia’s. Even by the end of Colley’s period, its home-produced forces were modest by comparison with those of France or Russia, or ...”

“... The Young Rebecca is a collection of the writings of Rebecca West from 1911 to 1917, selected and introduced by Jane Marcus, with just the right amount of explanation and comment. In one respect it is an unfortunate title, suggesting an item from the cast-list of almost any black-and-white film about almost any celebrity, but in the respect that it makes a point of Rebecca West’s youth, it is a good title ...”

“... college in 1981. There is the frequently flaunted economic fact that there is no future in Anthony Crosland’s sort of socialism because there is no firm future for the growth which – although less unequivocally than subsequent commentators have assumed – Crosland supposed adequate public spending to require. There have even been a few ...”

“... is a Caribbean island of 120 square miles with a population of 110,000. Unlike some of the larger West Indian islands, Grenada has no heavy industry (no oil or bauxite); its production is agricultural – nutmegs chiefly. Grenadians sell their fruit and vegetables in Trinidad and then return home in their boats. Their island came into the news when there was ...”

“... author-hero is said to be a ‘chapter of accidents’, and in the title and precarious plot of Anthony Powell’s O, How the wheel becomes it! The wheel is Ophelia’s, and suggests the incessant circlings of fortune, but quickly, in Powell’s hands, comes to hint at roulette and the dodgy hazards of English literary life. Comedy loves ...”

“... in these pages that he found the whole affair boring – ‘cold mutton’, as he said about the Anthony Blunt affair. Perhaps he did. Historians are queer. Still, boredom is ruder than execration. I have nearly finished imitating A.J.P. Taylor’s rhythms now. Let me add this. I once wrote a whole book in what I conceived to be his style – short, choppy ...”

“... The vast Soviet-bloc intelligence operation in the West is commonly supposed to consist mainly of running illegals, moles and other agents. In fact, the KGB probably spends more of its time reading the newspapers. Much of the intelligence which can be obtained only by covert means in the East is freely available through open sources in the West ...”

“... Vansittart are described in similar terms, but the worst treatment of all is reserved for Sir Anthony Nutting. In his introduction to the new edition of The Suez Affair, Hugh Thomas describes Sir Anthony as ‘the one man who conducted himself consistently and with impeccable honour’ at the time of Suez, and it is a ...”

“... with the possibility. Probably the best account of his youthful self is in the first volume of Anthony Powell’s memoirs, Infants of the Spring. ‘He was one of those individuals – a recognised genus – who seem to have been sent into the world to be talked about. Such persons satisfy a basic human need. Connolly’s behaviour, love affairs, financial ...”