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“... on the thoroughness of the initial destruction and that nothing of importance can he built without major sacrifices. Sometimes one gets the impression that many Soviets hold dear not that which has innate value as significant in itself but rather that which has cost them much suffering.’ The inhibited quality of analysis continues when the draft programme ...”

“... that glasnost is sweeping all before it. Taboo subjects may be fewer, but they exist and involve major features of Soviet life. The press has yet to discuss the role of the KGB in Soviet society, or the promotion and sacking of Politburo members, or the condition of the hundreds of political prisoners. It has hardly begun to reveal the substantial ...”

“... were still called after Pavlik Morozov, and the patriotic writer Alexander Prokhanov – a major influence on the present leadership of the Russian Communist Party – invoked his exemplary character in his famous novel of the Afghan campaign, A Tree in the Centre of Kabul, published in the early Eighties. This was the time when Druzhnikov was ...”

“... as in old bound copies of the Sphere or Graphic magazines. ‘The war of 1914-1918 became a major cultural event,’ as the Introduction rightly observes. Some of the best excerpts are from Charles Péguy: from the Vers libre of Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc and from his attack on the ‘socialist art’ advocated by ...”

“... military administration of India. He was lucky that his reputation survived South Africa. The one major engagement he fought there, at Paardeburg, he tried to win by the same methods that had worked at Omdurman. Overriding the advice of the more experienced general on the spot that the besieged Boers could more economically be starved into ...”

“... to which it had grown accustomed. For years now the BBC has been unable to fund by itself the major drama and documentary series. Producers must wait on tenterhooks for money to be raised from foreign broadcasters before they can see their ideas turned into reality. So it has no longer been possible to sustain the organisation and all its activities ...”

“... On the contrary, the advancement of science and its associated technologies is seen by many as the major threat to both freedom of speech and freedom from fear – if not to freedom of worship. In any case, somebody has to decide what problems ought to be tackled. That somebody has to have a very long purse. Science is much too expensive to be undertaken out ...”

“... leader by traditional, and legitimately predatory, commercial practices over many decades. Its major expansion came with the ‘chaining’ of US bookshops in the Eighties. The UK usually lags behind America in retail bookselling so this process is only now underway in Britain, with Waterstone’s assault on W.H. Smith. In historical terms, a late ...”

“... John Franklin (1786-1847) was the most famous vanisher of the Victorian era. He joined the Navy as a midshipman at the age of 14, and fought in the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. When peace with the French broke out, he turned his attention to Arctic exploration, and in particular to solving the conundrum of the Northwest Passage, the mythical clear-water route which would, if it existed, link the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans above the northern coast of the American continent ...”

“... In May 1983 he was promoted to assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Vessey, and over the next couple of years he oversaw a secret team – operating in part out of the office of Daniel Murphy, Bush’s chief of staff – which quietly conducted at least 35 covert operations against drug trafficking, terrorism and, most ...”

“... John Turturro​ ’s Fading Gigolo is a delicate movie about indelicate matters. No, wait, perhaps it’s an indelicate movie about delicate matters. The uncertainty does the film no harm but it seems to have prompted critics to simplify their doubts and decide they have seen it all before. It’s true the film owes a lot to Woody Allen, and not just because he has a major acting part in it ...”

“... the massive resistance of capital, labour, finance and public opinion. Unlike the Webbs, Mosley or John Strachey (in the authoritarian phase of his Coming Struggle for Power), PEP’s most outspoken planners still held to a belief in planning within an open democratic society. Yet they achieved this worthy position by evading the question of power. Power was ...”

“... country, I replied with a journalist’s discretion. But what did he think of the Afghans? The major stared gloomily out of the truck window at the Soviet armoured vehicle escorting us, its crew vainly trying to control the metal tracks as they skidded on the ice. His wife and daughter were in Tashkent and he had already vouchsafed his desire to return to ...”

“... It comes as a surprise to learn that the second artist given a major show at the Museum of Modern Art was Diego Rivera, for when the exhibition opened in December 1931, the 45-year-old Mexican was already a celebrated Communist. Just as surprising, given that the museum was founded by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and friends, is what Rivera chose to display: five fresco panels devoted to Mexican history from the perspective of the recent revolution, and three others concerning New York City during the Depression ...”

“... has a long tradition in Britain. Thomas Grant, in his book about the Old Bailey, Court Number One (John Murray, £10.99), gives special credit to Rebecca West, who wrote about treason and spy cases from the 1940s to the 1960s, and Sybille Bedford, whose account of the trial of Dr Bodkin Adams in 1957 is ‘generally regarded as the finest single volume account ...”