“... the US refuse to sell Taiwan the means of ‘deterrence’? There is money behind this, too, you may be sure. But it is the long-term consequence of a short-term policy of sowing dragon’s teeth. The Dame of Sark was never such a turbulent proxy. In the​ first week of March, China’s Finance Minister, Xiang Huaicheng, sent the new Bush Administration ...”

“... 20th-century premier. It wasn’t all bad. By the time he had been forced out by Churchill in May 1940, as a result of the failed Norwegian campaign, his stock had sunk fairly low but, as Robert Self points out, he continued to serve in Churchill’s government to such good effect that the latter made no bones about saying that Chamberlain was ‘the best ...”

“... to Watts, the Indians to the reservation. Leaving me to be the sole whipping-boy of the man who may have held a Harvard degree, but was a disgrace to it, cruder and meaner . . . than any of the street mobsters that Mr S. ever hosted. Such was the father of our country’s most captivating President. Mr Ambassador, if anyone had the guts to spit in his ...”

“... as theft. An even earlier – possibly the earliest – propounding of the rule that finders may not be keepers is at the start of Book XI of Plato’s Laws, a work which discusses, in relentless detail, the laws that should govern an imaginary new colony to be founded on Crete. Under the general principle ‘Thou shalt not touch or move my possessions ...”

“... who proclaim that the battle is not yet lost, and that those who convert to austere green lives may yet save the planet and their souls. As well as the scientists and theologians (two imams, a rabbi and almost all flavours of Christian), there were Greenlanders on board. For a population only the size of Inverness, sprinkled round the edges of the biggest ...”

“... dei cipressi . . . Under the shade of cypresses, if urns are consoled by the grief of mourners, may the sleep of death be perhaps less harsh?’ The poem goes on to denounce the practice of burial in stinking churches, where venal priests terrify the credulous into paying for intercessionary prayers. Instead Foscolo conjures up an ideal of ...”

“... them. Second, associating the family with morality and the ‘Stalinist regime’ with its absence may give us a comfortable feeling that we are on the right side of history, but historians have a responsibility to try to explain what those alien beings from the past thought they were doing. This is not a matter of ‘tout comprendre, c’est tout ...”

“... metaphors are symptoms of vapid thought. If style expresses the soul of an author, dissecting it may seem impertinent, rather like dissecting someone’s appearance. There is an intimacy and elusiveness about style that seems to forbid such meddling. Writers might well prefer to hear that their plots are unconvincing than that their syntax is ...”

“... from exploding mortgages to collapsing schools and a real-wage death spiral. Its fiscal rules may prove a self-imposed prison. None of this is likely to prevent Labour winning, but there are few certainties about what it will do once it takes office.Starmer’s political statements rarely add up to much or endure for long: the ten moderately left-wing ...”

“... Socialist Party, and Amendola, who now knew that his position in 1922 had been naive. On 30 May, Matteotti gave a powerful speech in Parliament denouncing the use of violence and intimidation during the campaign and calling for the election to be annulled. He was met with interruptions and insults, as well as open threats. Eleven days later, Matteotti ...”

“... of this have occurred at New College of Florida, a small liberal arts institution in Sarasota.In May, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a preliminary report on the state of academic freedom in Florida, which concluded that ‘academic freedom, tenure and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently ...”

“... heart and pushed through a constitutional amendment allowing him another ten years in office. He may well continue as president for life: he’s only 57, a ‘small boy’ compared to 65-year-old Paul Kagame of Rwanda (23 years in office), 79-year-old Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo (26 years in office), 81-year-old Teodor0 Obiang Nguema ...”

“... princes are obliged to resort to in the face of desperate and difficult circumstances’; they may ‘exceed common law’ and ‘harm particular interests’ in order to promote ‘the public good’.* Naudé opposed religious fanaticism, yet he upheld as a model coup the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, when Charles IX ordered the slaughter of ...”

“... Nevertheless – and this is the second quality – however depressed and listless these men may briefly become, like Coyote they bounce back, spurred by ambition and blind self-belief. When Donovan contacts James, now a lowly solicitor, and asks him to process his divorce, James imagines that his early dreams of a brilliant career will finally be ...”