“... The problem​ with Israel,’ Tony Judt wrote in the New York Review of Books in 2003, is not – as is sometimes suggested – that it is a European ‘enclave’ in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-19th-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law ...”

“... For Tony Judt What is a collective passion? And is it something we should want, or get excited about? Today the political climate across the Western world is marked, we are told, by a curious and disabling atrophy or disaffection. We do not care enough. The election of Obama would be the exception. His election was of course inspirational, notably in terms of collective life: the mass registration of black voters was close to what might be called the forging of a new political constituency across generation and race ...”

“... Engineering with Business Management from York. Rowed throughout my degree – proud to be that white rose. Showed those public school $%^&’s how to do it properly. Making bombs and other stuff for a living – would tell you more but I’d have to kill you. [A reference to his work for QinetiQ.] Getting married to the most amazing woman in the world ...”

“... school should Bridget go to next year?) and make some of the decisions (should Tony see a doctor again about his feet?); someone to carry in the coal, peel the potatoes, and make her a cup of tea in the mornings. My father’s renewed presence was brought home to us by sound as well as sight; wherever he was in the house, snatches of ...”

“... him.Despite MPs’ fears that Corbyn would democratise the party in the manner once envisioned by Tony Benn – compulsory reselection of MPs and so on – the leadership’s embrace of the new members was lukewarm. Little effort was made to convert members on paper into active participants, and party headquarters didn’t try very hard to find out who they ...”

“... base. Progressive politics was increasingly a preoccupation of public sector workers, salaried white collar employees and new social movements. The challenge for the SPD was to integrate its disparate interests with what remained of its traditional base. Divisions in the SPD, as much as pressure from the opposition, put paid to Schmidt’s government in ...”

“... tried to continue some form of modern classicism – David Wild, John Winter, David Chipperfield, Tony Fretton, Georgie Wolton (an exceptionally rare woman in this group), the partnership of Alan Colquhoun and John Miller. In the 1970s and 1980s most of these could be found designing mews houses and studios in Camden, Hampstead and Islington, all of course ...”

“... wanted. He called for a ‘general amnesty’ of previously banned accounts, including those of white supremacists. Advertisers were spooked: they didn’t want their brands to appear next to violent pornography or anything too obviously racist. In Musk’s first month, ad sales fell 80 per cent. Musk blamed ‘activist groups’ for turning advertisers ...”

“... intelligence-gathering operations taking place in this country today. This is the reality behind Tony Blair’s evangelical declaration that ‘we . . . here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.’ Shoulder to shoulder is not the ...”

“... I doubt if she’ll be pleased.Some of my liking, I confess, arises from sheer Southern California white trash fellow feeling. Pepper was born near Los Angeles and spent most of his rackety life (as I have) on the West Coast. His father was a shipyard worker and nasty alcoholic; his mother, a dim-witted teenage bride, didn’t want him and late in her ...”

“... other innocent countries to feed his insatiable appetite for territory. Vance’s staff, led by Tony Lake, dismissed Brzezinski’s outlook as ‘globaloney’: viewing all events through a Cold War lens, rather than as the people on the ground saw them. Even now, long after the Cold War has ended, the lens is still in use.For once, Brzezinski lost the ...”

“... in 2003, responsibility for the disastrous decision to send the army to Helmand in 2006 belongs to Tony Blair. And yet it takes two to indulge in unnecessary wars: the leader to tell the military what to do, and the military to tell the leader that it can be done. Ledwidge quotes Matt Cavanagh, who worked in Downing Street on the Helmand plan, as saying that ...”

“... of a flight to Bahrain, to ‘prove the route’ for British Airways, his phone rang. It was Tony Benn, Secretary of State for Industry. Mr Trubshaw, Benn said, I understand you’re off to Bahrain next week; is there a chance you could organise a flight for me and some of the chaps before you go? Certainly Minister, Trubshaw replied. No problem at ...”

“... public schools would be in breach of parents’ ‘human rights’ under the Convention. Perhaps Tony Blair welcomes being constrained in this way, looks forward to being able to blame the Attorney General in the next Labour Government for stopping him from being as radical as his comrades would like him to be. But such issues as property ...”

“... in each of the figures in Buddenbrooks, especially in Thomas but also in Christian and also in Tony, and in all the figures more or less.’ He just could not stop. ‘Nothing mattered more to Thomas Mann than to win the world’s respect,’ Hayman writes, but in the mornings all Mann’s life, alone with whatever version of the self, or of his family, he ...”