“... 1931 as his text, Howell announced that a white prince (the Duke of Gloucester, who represented George V at the coronation) had bowed before the Black king. ‘We of the black race are now free.’ Haile Selassie was, he said, the Black Messiah. Events unfolded from this point in a way that becomes familiar as Subin’s ...”

“... Whether we agree with it or not, there was always a plausible argument for intervention in Iraq. The Prime Minister might, therefore, have fewer problems with public opinion in the future than he does now. The important political question to be asked is not whether his policy is right or wrong – that is a rather different ethical and moral question – but why a man usually so risk-averse was prepared to take so many risks with the unity of the Labour Party ...”

“... On the final turn-off a car full of teenagers gave one-fingered salutes, honking their horn until we were out of sight. One of the strengths of Nicholas Shakespeare’s In Tasmania is that he comes from an island far away. He can play the part of a baffled British visitor, asking awkward questions which land him right at the heart of the most sensitive ...”

“... shacks. His distrust of the police, someone said, was disturbing, but our fears proved groundless. We eventually reached our hotel, a palace of light, without any problem. Port-au-Prince is obviously very poor – more than half the population live in bidonvilles – but it is also vibrant and colourful, in the way such places often are, with kerbside ...”

“... done unless it would be useful to someone in high position. The normal processes of government as we understand them in the West do not exist. Yeltsin benefits from this: as long as he has the Army and the intelligence services on his side, he can disappear from view for long periods almost as easily as Leonid Brezhnev could, claiming ill-health or ...”

“... rain forests, sometimes claim that they do. The forests, they say, have been here much longer than we have, and have as much right to exist as the rapacious human species that is destroying them. Arguing that trees have rights is their way of insisting that there is something to be said on the trees’ behalf in environmental disputes, quite apart from what ...”

“... freedom at sea, just as Britain once did. Under the Proliferation Security Initiative launched by George Bush in 2003, the US Navy has interdicted, boarded and searched ships as a matter of course. In December 2020, the US military published an official strategy document titled ‘Advantage at Sea’ which claimed that American sea power had assured ...”

“... peacekeepers now serve there. Senior Chinese leaders have been making two visits a year to Africa (George Bush has not visited the continent during his second term), and last November nearly every African leader attended a major summit in Beijing. China’s poor labour standards, environmental policies and human rights failings were once issues only for ...”

“... Lord Hutton. Most of his interventions were concerned with the operation of a subsection that we had considered a very small part of a bigger picture. But a key part of the success of a judge lies in his or her skill at isolating the issue for decision: the larger it is, the broader the sweep of the case; the narrower, the fewer implications a ruling will ...”

“... boy, can they be smart!’The Modest Interviewer: ‘Who are you talking to consistently – since we have some dire foreign policy issues percolating around the world right now – who are you consulting with consistently so that you’re ready on day one?’ Trump: ‘I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a ...”

“... The first people on this continent reached its southernmost point, the south-western tip of what we now call Tasmania, forty thousand years ago. In their creation myths, ancestral spirits breathed life into the land, a life that was celebrated in stories, songs, sand sculpture, ochre paint. Every rock, river, mountain, hill, camp, track and ritual spot on ...”

“... he is difficult to docket in terms of the usual literary discussions of Victorian Poetry.’ We are given no example of the literary discussions allegedly ‘usual’. However, the author of Possession (Booker Prize 1990) speaks on these matters with authority, being herself a Victorian poet, industrious and prolific: These things are there. The garden ...”

“... staged re-enactments of beatings that have already taken place, or prophecies of those to come? We will not know more until the court martial runs its course, and we may not know everything even then. The assessment has just begun. Meanwhile in the US the American Civil Liberties Union recently released another report ...”

“... even those on the right, have approached their subject in a different spirit. In 2015 the Bush White House veteran Jonathan Horn published The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, a consideration of Lee’s failure to defend his country in its hour of need. Allen Guelzo’s new study goes further. An unusual figure in the American academy – an eminent ...”

“... through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark. John Buchan, Greenmantle (1916) As Lloyd George’s wartime Director of Information, John Buchan urged Britain to support an incomprehensible Eastern war with the cry: ‘The Turk must go!’ At the beginning of 1916, the Turk was not going anywhere: he held fast at Gallipoli, driving off the Allied ...”