“... of battles that failed to be decisive.’ Along the way much attention is given by Tuchman to what Winston Churchill called ‘the terrible “ifs” ’ of history. What, Tuchman asks, if Germany had not decided to invade and occupy Belgium; if the French General Staff had adopted a defensive rather than an offensive strategy, thus preventing the German ...”

“... the face of this insanity, a test case was brought by the ‘Stonehenge Two’, Margaret Jones and Richard Lloyd, who had been charged with ‘trespassory assembly’. It reached the House of Lords in 1999, where it was decided in their favour on the basis that the right to use the public highway for any reasonable purpose was ‘an issue of fundamental ...”

“... and ministerial precocity went together. Jenkins was Home Secretary at 45, the youngest since Winston Churchill, and Chancellor of the Exchequer at 47. In both these posts he gave much-needed sparkle to a drab and sometimes grubby government; in the second, he also managed to undo much, though not all, of the damage which the vacillations and ...”

“... career as the avatar of the good and the not-so-good, still travelling in the wake of Little Richard. The history of rock ’n’ roll focuses on the white triumvirate – Presley, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis, who have at different times heaped contumely on themselves – neglecting its roots in Jazz and the Blues, and a sibling relationship with ...”

“... of this sort. Would Anthony Eden wield the knife against its leader, the elderly and infirm Winston Churchill? For Churchill, who was further debilitated by a stroke in 1953, was resolute on one subject: that he would not cede the premiership to Eden. At last, Eden became leader and prime minister in 1955, but was promptly finished off by the Suez ...”

“... during the Thirties; each was an important art-collector. But there the resemblance ends. Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor (1879-1953), Duke of Westminster – called Bend’Or from the family coat of arms – was the product of a landed Cheshire family whose estate, Eaton Hall south of Liverpool, dated from the 15th century. The family’s first hereditary ...”

“... totally eclipsed by Cagney and co as gangster films hit their stride. Of a child-star called Baby Richard Headrick: dunked in a fountain thirty times in an afternoon, shivering and fighting back tears, and with his father standing guard. Schulberg’s detached yet sympathetic gaze seems to have been sharply focused almost since birth, and behind many episodes ...”

“... In their crumpled suits and schoolboy ties, they seemed so harmless! When the grandson of Winston Churchill (Sir Nicholas Soames) and the great-great grandson of Lord Salisbury (Richard Benyon) are being booted out, it would seem that the age of cap-doffing is well and truly over. But Cummings was merely ...”

“... into the meeting with his client, Draper asks the company president, who’s come all the way from Winston-Salem, to describe how tobacco is made. ‘We plant it in the South Carolina sunshine,’ the old man drawls, ‘cut it, cure it, toast it – ’ ‘There you go!’ Draper says, and writes: LUCKY STRIKE: IT’S TOASTED. All cigarette tobacco is toasted ...”

“... daily ‘hair of the dog that bit me’ basis. We should have known, of course. We were warned by Richard Rorty in 1998: Something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for – someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky ...”

“... back the Navy on the eve of the Falklands affair. But the greatest civilian despot of them all was Winston Churchill, who, having observed the disastrous fumblings of the First World War at first hand, imposed his own dominance in the Second, and reported, of his experience with the Chiefs of Staff; ‘you assemble in conclave the most gallant of soldiers, the ...”

“... talent is as much a tribute to the post-war grammar school as it is to the wonders of Little Richard. Brought up by the bookish and financially comfortable Aunt Mimi, Lennon was shaped by the conflicts of the bright working-class kid in the grammar crammer. Selected to make social progress and clearly intellectually able, he instead devoted almost his ...”

“... Oliver Franks, Edwin Plowden, Robert Hall, Edward Bridges, Alec Cairncross, Edward Hall-Patch, Richard Hopkins and Roger Makins, to name only a few of the ‘mandarins’ who served the Labour Government so loyally. Therein lay the problem, however. They did what their Labour masters wanted, and did it very well. Nationalisation apart (and few of them ...”

“... parenting style would bring their son to ‘hit the couch four times a week’ in the office of Dr Richard Lacy. But, then, that’s the point. Just before the end, Shteyngart writes: ‘On so many occasions in my novels I have approached a certain truth only to turn away from it, only to point my finger and laugh at it and then scurry back to safety. In this ...”

“... Negotiating the commercial treaty of 1860 with France, Richard Cobden, he later revealed, felt ‘humiliated’ by the contrast between the rational system of measurement in force across the Channel and the weird complication of its British counterpart. Metrication and decimalisation would not only smooth the conquering path of British commerce but contribute to the harmony of nations ...”