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“... that had been written for him. It was in the names of the cells at Bagram: Lebanon, Somalia, USS Cole, Nairobi, Twin Towers, Pentagon. To Begg, this list referred to an eclectic set of episodes over twenty years which had nothing in common except the deaths of Americans and Muslims, but to whoever wrote them, this was a coherent, tightly linked sequence of ...”

“... intelligence required to make proper use of that knowledge’. Nice work if you can do it, as Cole Porter didn’t quite say. Kermode is not Housman and not a diviner. But he does devote much exquisite intelligence to matters of divination – even and especially of secular affairs. He would like to believe we could do without such obliquities. He is ...”

“... it would otherwise be the hour for bed. At home there was the large painting of Florence by Thomas Cole that covered half a wall in the front parlour, as well as ‘the tall entrancing folios of Nash’s lithographed Mansions of England in the Olden Time’ that he liked to spread out on the drawing-room carpet. Poring over a set of volumes devoted to ‘the ...”

“... sentenced 13 of them to death. The ‘boss’, a powerful Indonesian Chinese businessman known as David Wong, was arrested in Indonesia and sent to prison for six years. Wong is by no means the only boss. Sony Wei, the leader of the pirates who hijacked the Chang Sheng, spoke, in the course of his testimony, of working for another Indonesian Chinese ...”

“... ecological credentials, which anticipate those of another wilderness-loving loner, Henry David Thoreau, Natty is also, as the book’s final words put it, ‘the foremost in that band of Pioneers, who are opening the way for the march of the nation across the continent’. More than three thousand copies of The Pioneers were purchased within hours of ...”

“... masculinity’ is a whole subject in itself, entertainingly and learnedly discussed in Shaun Cole’s perfectly titled Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, which shows in fascinating detail how ‘clothing has been a primary method of identification for and of gay men.’ Gay fashion signifiers have included red neckties, suede shoes, pale blue or pink ...”

“... in jobs. In 2010 France embarked on a spectacular eviction programme – Roma again – and David Cameron pledged to bring down annual net migration to the UK from hundreds to ‘tens of thousands’, a fantastic notion unless Britain left the European Union and refused entry to ever growing numbers of British returnees – 80,000 plus in 2008 ...”

“... the confidence of the still uncertain John Gielgud. Later in the run he took me out to supper with Cole Lesley and Graham Payn to the Savoy, where we had sausages and mash. Alas, I have no memories of his conversation on either occasion, remembering only how he put me at my ease and seemed much kinder and nicer than I’d been led to expect. 14 April. Watch ...”

“... in America, and Jamaican sound systems had served Britain’s black communities with Nat King Cole, calypso and early forms of reggae. In Britain, by 1960 La Discothèque had opened in Wardour Street, and clubs such as the Place in Hanley and the Plaza in Manchester had instituted disc-only sessions. In the early Sixties the demand for such sessions in ...”

“... but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned … as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation. This extraordinary generosity ...”

“... palace coup in Oman in 1970 and – last but not least – three abortive plots, farmed out to David Stirling and sundry other mercenaries under the initially benevolent eye of Western intelligence services, to overthrow the Gaddafi regime between 1971 and 1973 in an episode known as the Hilton Assignment. At the same time, the story of Libya in 2011 gives ...”

“... Rossa were aware of Alfred Nobel’s dynamite compound, invented in 1867. ‘Dynamite,’ as Sarah Cole wrote in her book At the Violet Hour (2012),held highly idealised associations. It offered new vistas of power, not solely for its potential to wreak destruction but also for its ability to terrify a wide public. The connotations of dynamite for radical ...”