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“... When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the situation seemed urgent. American representatives had shown King Fahd and his Saudi advisers communications intercepts which indicated that Iraq might he intending to continue its predatory sweep to the Saudi oil fields. Since the Saudis by themselves would not be able to stop them, the King reluctantly decided to invite American help ...”

“... who had the white pieces, castled on the queen’s side in an attempt to target Carlsen’s king by opening up the king’s side. This manoeuvre was a bit of a gamble. Though he had prepared a defence with an unusual rook move, he had exposed his king to Carlsen’s active ...”

“... fundamental right. Recently, I have heard them voice similar views about the jailing in Austria of David Irving – the man who prided himself on having shaken more hands that shook hands with Hitler than anyone else in the world – for Holocaust denial. It seems that racists and Nazis are never far from the centre of concerns about free speech. In the ...”

“... such as Norman Stone, Hew Strachan, Annette Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau. With Cataclysm, David Stevenson draws on much recent work to provide a comprehensive account of the war, with a welcome interest both in the non-European theatres and in the home fronts. His book is also part of a more general attempt to rethink the meaning of the Great War and ...”

“... offensive. When Johnson indulges himself in it, his thesis recalls the ancient paradox of the king who spends 12-hour nights dreaming he is a beggar and the beggar who always dreams he is a king: neither seems better-off. By treating all disappointments as if they were equivalent, Johnson makes the happiest life no ...”

“... fans will recognise the old cast of characters, those almost-forgotten names – Charles Colson, David Young, Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh – and there is pleasure in this: a bit like watching an old horror film on late-night TV. Yet on that level Mr Hersh is not exciting. We know the Watergate story from every angle and, by now, from the memoirs of almost every ...”

“... with his aristocratic patrons. On meeting Infante don Luis de Borbón, the brother of King Carlos III, he boasted to Zapater: ‘His Highness offered me a thousand honours.’ His relationship with this branch of the royal family lasted for decades and gave him the opportunity to take on ambitious projects. The large group portrait of Don Luis and ...”

“... of his Reflections, denounced the French Revolution as an epic tragedy in the making, a real-life King Lear in which foolish intentions would inexorably melt into blood (‘in the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows’). A swelling number of French counter-revolutionaries agreed with him, hoping in vain to forge ...”

“... questions. Sinfield quotes such choice examples as: ‘ “While we may hope for a happy ending to King Lear, Shakespeare’s conclusion is entirely fitting.” Discuss.’ Because the question is cast entirely in terms of demonstrating the exquisite fitness of every part of Shakespeare’s dramatic design, the apparently open discussion necessarily excludes ...”

“... him as the new Charlemagne. He turned former drummer boys and schoolteachers into dukes, made a king of Naples out of a one-time grocer’s assistant, and married the niece of Marie-Antoinette. But all this pomp entirely failed to produce the desired effect. If Napoleon inspired loyalty and affection, even in defeat, it was not because of the would-be ...”

“... it as a pharmakon, meaning a beneficial ‘recipe’ for both memory and wisdom. However, the king who has the authority to accept the pharmakon hears the word differently and is suspicious of the addictive drug with its more probable narcotic effects.The inventor of écriture is thus accused of smuggling drugs. The Czechoslovak authorities who arrested ...”

“... series of eye-problems, partly the effects of undiagnosed porphyria, which eventually left the king blind. He was fascinated by the stage, and in the 1780s became drama critic for the Morning Post. He cultivated the friendship of actors, dramatists, theatre managers, with extraordinary assiduity; indeed, over a period of more than forty years he seems to ...”

“... Lewis Carroll. (The fact that the latter also represented the indisputable nadir in the career of David Bowie is, for the purposes of this review, neither here nor there.) In the film Dreamchild, the cinematic meditation on the life of the real Alice directed by Gavin Millar and scripted by Dennis Potter, Henson was the obvious choice to supply the puppets ...”

“... corpulent and sagging, takes in the spectacle, flanked by his bride, dark-eyed Herodias. The king’s rheumy gaze is fixed on his stepdaughter’s nakedness. In the corner, a kneeling servant proffers Salome’s reward, chosen at her mother’s behest: the severed head of John the Baptist, gory and ragged, already halfway to bone. But Salome, still ...”

“... when a change of surface texture – say, between one fabric and another – must be registered. (David would let this French tradition of brushwork be the vehicle for political rather than religious probity.) This is a very different craft from the more energetic kind which makes surfaces in Rubens’s paintings seem more alive than the hair or fur or flesh ...”