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“... the usual upright, and excruciatingly painful, position. One of the most memorable passages in Robert Harris’s new novel, Imperium, describes the famous crucifixion of the six thousand slave comrades of the rebel Spartacus, who had been rounded up by the Romans in 71 BC. Harris imagines the victorious Roman general, Crassus, carefully choreographing this ...”

“... the ground before the arrival of the main columns of American armour, which were carrying the TV crews and embedded journalists. What went on during this fighting? Virtually none of this was covered. At one point during the war, the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London gathered together all the TV and newspaper reports of a single day’s ...”

“... on Ministry of Labour notepaper. Exactly how Macleod’s marriage worked is a question which Robert Shepherd is far too respectful to answer. Inevitably, Macleod’s wit and somewhat dissolute charm appealed far more to Tory selection committees than did Powell’s heavy earnestness, hunting pink or no. In 1948 Macleod was selected for the safe seat of ...”

“... after man leaps to a gun. Flash from the centre – five then flash as one. Faces of straining gun-crews,      Vicious and vivid Fire spirals and cataracts – knives, spikes Of fire stabbing the dark. Batters and strikes On the ears the unutterable, profound      Debauchery of sound.Much of the later part of the poem addresses Lewis’s hesitant ...”

“... afternoon, with its atmosphere of electioneering and death, brings to mind the insistent taps of Robert Lowell’s ‘For the Union Dead’: The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier grow slimmer and younger each year – wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets and muse through their sideburns. Senator John Forbes Kerry, the nominee, didn’t spring ...”

“... in 1951 – despite the plain fact that the weight of the lead shielding required to protect crews from lethal radiation made such a plane impossible. In the 1960s, when Selin was issuing his mordant warning, the US had a hugely expensive arsenal of one thousand intercontinental Minuteman missiles, originally justified by the threat of a ‘missile ...”

“... the convoy ‘got a muted reception when it parked in the ruins of Berlin’. In France, the bus crews were treated to mayoral banquets, only for their leader to complain about the ‘strange dishes’ which weren’t ‘up to English standards’. Frank Forsdick and his men asked for ‘a bit of old English roast beef or a plate of fish and chips’ and ...”

“... on its masthead. Pseudonyms were popular at the time: Godard liked Hans Lucas, Truffaut went for Robert Lachenay or François de Montferrand, Chabrol called himself Jean-Yves Goutte. But for Rohmer the game was also a necessary act of concealment. He had been using a variety of false names since arriving in Paris: he was Gilbert Cordier for his novel ...”

“... later reflected, that he had had an experienced mentor to call on for advice – someone such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who ‘had always seemed to me “one of the family”’. Greene was distantly related to RLS through his mother’s cousin. ‘Names which appeared in his Collected Letters were photographs in our family album. In the nursery we played ...”

“... a voice-over commentary. This is quite different, however, from the documentary form originated by Robert Flaherty in the 1920s and which is still employed in a large proportion of the films labelled as ‘ethnographic’. In these, a group of characters are followed through a series of activities arranged according to the dramaturgical requirements of a ...”

“... were missing in action in all of the services, including the merchant navy, and extending to the crews of trawlers enlisted as minesweepers. Officers made it onto the formal obituary page, sometimes with an appended ‘personal tribute’: one man, besides being an officer, was a fine mechanic, loved sailing, and was good at drawing and sketching. Those ...”

“... society. In the long-running series COPS, a half-hour ‘documentary/reality’ show, camera crews ride with the police as they pull over and sometimes spreadeagle young black men against their squad cars or on the ground. As we watch from the police’s point of view, the ‘action’ has a queasy tinge of exploitation. Another long-running TV ...”

“... entirely appropriate to his base, the 35 to 40 per cent of the electorate who remain unmoved by Robert Mueller’s recent arrests. It also reflects an indisputable reality: the progressive erosion of checks and balances on presidential war-making power. The president is now understood as the sovereign who decides, not just for the United States, but, given ...”

“... that wars were irregular, too, but ‘sure as hell there’s a war coming.’ He trained the crews for B-17s in New Mexico before being made commander of the 703rd squadron of B-24 Liberators. Based in Tibenham, Norfolk, with 20 planes under his command, he was cited for keeping his squadron together in dangerous missions over Germany with fewer losses ...”

“... Arena.* Disorientation is the defining characteristic of this riverside zone. I encountered camera crews searching for the Thames path and others in quest of that newly installed Boris wheeze, the cable car. An interrogator from German television challenged me. ‘What are those new tents?’ ‘Nothing now. They used to be the David Beckham Academy. He moved ...”