“... what in the 1930s the American historian Herbert Bolton called ‘the epic of Greater America’. John Elliott’s long awaited book is just that. It not only fills an obvious gap – more like a chasm – but sets the pattern for a whole new historiography of the European colonial empires. As with all Elliott’s books, the architecture and the scope are ...”

“... of Cape Town and Table Mountain. Among those who have bought houses here are Earl Spencer, Elton John and Michael Douglas, but the oddity is that, while you might assume, as you drive through its wonderful avenues, that Constantia’s residents are nothing if not respectable, you’d be dead wrong, because not only did Mark set himself up in palatial style ...”

“... all these places, but consistently imagined that the resistance was being fomented by London and Washington. Howard says nothing about Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, which was taken by Prussia in 1871, returned to France in 1919, taken again by Germany in 1940, and returned to France in 1945. The city had huge symbolic importance for the French, and in ...”

“... the use of the bomb, while the 31 August 1946 issue of the New Yorker had been entirely devoted to John Hersey’s unsparing account of what the nuclear attack had meant for civilians in Hiroshima. Stimson’s 7300-word testimonial – which was in fact written by McGeorge Bundy, later national security adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, with input and edits from ...”

“... though as Bower says, it’s not a criticism you’ll find being levelled in the New York Times or Washington Post, both of which have similar structures.) Black’s first steps in the newspaper business had come in 1965 when he bought a half-share in two weekly newspapers for $500. He moved to a small town near Montreal, and began editing the Knowlton ...”

“... 2277, and your character begins the game living in Vault 101, a bomb shelter set near the ruins of Washington. The game has the usual props and targets, but one of the most striking things about it is the opportunity it offers to explore the bombed-out, desolate, intensely evocative city. This is something which, once you’ve done it, I suspect will be ...”

“... it interpreted as the ‘anti-German message’ of the proposed United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC as a threat to the alliance between the two countries. It offered to pay up to $50 million to set up a display that would tell the story of German resistance and suffering during the war and the country’s democratic recovery after it. The offer ...”

“... be found in the Spectator’s portrait of Sir Roger de Coverley; and it reached its apotheosis in Washington Irving’s account of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20). Irving’s was the first, and by no means the last, American contribution to the idealisation of the English country house. He tells us that the ...”

“... New York Sun ran a sensational scoop: the ‘Great Astronomical Discoveries, Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, L.L.D., F.R.S., &c, at the Cape of Good Hope’. Herschel – former president of the Royal Astronomical Society and son of William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus – had sailed from Britain to South Africa two years before with a giant ...”

“... to commit suicide, but the coroner decided it was an accident. While the premature deaths of, say, John Berryman and Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath seemed somehow implicit in the trajectory of their careers, there was nothing remotely maudit about Jarrell, until the last couple of years of his life, when the approach of his 50th birthday induced a bout of ...”

“... Between 1938 and 1940, the Italian-American writer John Fante published three books. The first two – Wait until Spring, Bandini (1938) and Ask the Dust (1939) – were novels; the third, Dago Red (1940), was a collection of short stories. All three were well received. Ask the Dust disconcerted some of its reviewers, but Bandini was admired by James Farrell and Steinbeck praised Dago Red ...”

“... revolutionists with a schema. The pervasive influence of Country publicists like Thomas Gordon, John Trenchard, Bolingbroke and Benjamin Hoadly on colonial pamphleteers is now taken for granted. American historians have tested Bailyn’s thesis by extending and particularising it. This is what T.H. Breen has done in Tobacco Culture. The impact of Country ...”

“... and as ‘a media putsch’. Nixon is of course good. Of Kennedy: ‘Like F.D.R., he turned Washington into a city of hope: that is to say, a place where middle-class intellectuals flocked for employment.’ Now we know why there were pictures of Kennedy in bars and public places in Europe, as of Churchill, and previously of Roosevelt, but not of any ...”

“... getting at the truth more important. Leaving the other members of the committee behind in Washington, he dashed round the country, interviewing engineers and from their data piecing together a sombre conclusion: the colder the surrounding temperature at launch, the more likely it became that hot gases could burst past the rubber seals between the ...”

“... and his personal lawyer – and precipitated grand jury investigations still going on in Virginia, Washington DC and New York. Also, hadn’t he been pronounced a traitor by James Clapper (former director of National Intelligence) and John Brennan (former director of the CIA)? How much more do you want? It didn’t strike ...”