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“... only gets a couple of pages); it is concerned not with the ramifications of one man’s mid-life crisis but the grand themes of love, war, globalisation and history. Nonetheless, it is still distinguished by Lanchester’s trademark humour, intelligence and taste for facts. The principal narrator is Tom Stewart, responsible for a full half of the novel (the ...”

“... win.) He was subjected to relentless attacks on his character in the local and national media. A group of young men, who for some reason were wearing dresses, splashed ammonia on him before a press conference. On my first night in Sochi, Nemtsov and the former chess champion turned oppositionist Garry Kasparov, who was helping him on the campaign ...”

“... that enable them to buy second homes. And there is still resistance. Between 1979 and the 1990s a group called Meibion Glyndŵr – the ‘sons’ of Owain Glyndŵr, who fought back English armies in the 15th century – participated in a campaign that resulted in the burning down of around two hundred holiday homes. Their actions echoed what happened in ...”

“... owns Mini and Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen owns Bentley, while the MG is owned by Nanjing Automobile Group of China – which might be one of the things that explains a degree of loose wiring in the English nationalist brain. In any event, when it comes to cars, the country is secretly obsessed with its supposed manufacturing prowess, and it is no mistake that ...”

“... hundreds of Greek city-states and ranks them according to various criteria, including size, fame, international activity and public building, as well as the prevalence of their currencies in the coin hoards of the time (on the reasonable assumption that if people wanted to hold its coins, your state must have had a pretty solid reputation). On all ...”

“... Democrats from patients incapable of giving meaningful assent, and this plunges him into a crisis of faith in democracy, communism and even the practical possibility of politics.Amerigo is a character primed for crisis: The Watcher is a text of sincere communist disillusionment as well as an unsparing satire of ...”

“... The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. He is a leading member of the group of ‘new’ or revisionist Israeli historians who, by challenging the conventional Zionist version of how the state of Israel came into existence, have sparked a debate which shows no sign of subsiding. The performance of the pre-state intelligence ...”

“... and self-determination, and many non-Russian radicals such as Stalin were attracted to Lenin’s group for this reason. The early Bolshevik leaderships included large numbers of Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Balts, Jews and others. Immediately after taking power, the Bolsheviks made good on their promise to allow national self-determination and ...”

“... background, the context in which he worked out his philosophy, and his influence. There is now an international journal, Studia Spinoza, and Spinoza societies exist in various Western countries. Above all, two new English-language editions of his writings are now appearing, one from Princeton, translated by Edwin Curley, of the entire corpus, the other from ...”

“... he followed up with a piece entitled ‘Tanzaphilia’: a withering critique of the regional and international left’s infatuation with one-party rule in Tanzania, as Tanganyika became in 1964. Both essays were incendiary, reinforcing Transition’s prestige as a magazine that set no store by orthodoxies. At the same time they sharpened the differences ...”

“... Greek mythology. All the things I read as a boy.’ Now he’s thinking of leaving. The financial crisis hasn’t affected hospital supplies, he says, apart from occasional blips with stationery. But his wages have been cut by 30 per cent. His basic salary, with 22 years’ experience, is €1350 a month, rising to a maximum of €3000 a month with ...”

“... a fact which merely reinforced its hard line and bad habits. In any case, the same old leadership group hung on and on and on in the approved gerontocratic fashion – Slovo, Goldberg and Wolpe were prominent names in the SACP of 1961 and still are in 1991 – and this extraordinary continuity was enhanced by the powerful kinship networks which knit the Party ...”

“... as a financial centre, but if you include the offshore zones it’s estimated that a third of all international deposits and investments flow through Britain and its satellites. Moreover, according to the Financial Conduct Authority, most UK banks don’t enforce know-your-customer rules: the financial capital of the world doesn’t ask too many questions ...”

“... The most renowned historian of his time. Fernand Braudel owed his international reputation to the two great volumes on the Mediterranean in the age of Philip II which he published in 1949, and to his trilogy on the material civilisation of world capitalism, which appeared between 1967 and 1979. He died a few months before the first volumes of his incomplete final work came out in 1986 ...”

“... to exercise the other side of his political personality. In Florida he met in private with a group of state Democratic leaders who he felt had been lukewarm in getting behind the campaign. ‘This boy Kennedy is going to win and he’s going to win big,’ he told them. ‘And if he wins without the South, I’m warning you – I’m warning you – you ...”