“... and shootings temper the excitement of electoral empowerment. Whatever the election observers may say, it’s Suu Kyi herself who will – in the eyes of the West at least – decide whether or not the election has been ‘inclusive, transparent and credible’. She is the West’s true election monitor. The United States, the EU and especially the ...”

“... groups’, small bands that would, in theory, stick together on Monday morning, come what may. I was absorbed by the Bad Parents, named for a couple from New Jersey who had joined Occupy at the request of their teenage daughter. The three of them were willing to risk arrest and wanted to know what to expect. A few minutes later we were role-playing ...”

“... Its new headquarters, designed by Renzo Piano in elegant steel and glass, opened in Chelsea last May. For many months a cultural beacon in uptown Manhattan was dimmed, and the architectural dialogue between the inverted grey ziggurat of the Whitney on Madison Avenue and the expansive white spiral of the Guggenheim on Central Park, another masterpiece of late ...”

“... consolation from Cowen’s troubles: he had been barely a month in the job. Whatever hopes Ahern may have cherished that his self-sacrifice would be rewarded with a plum EU position disappeared. The Lisbon vote revealed a striking distrust of the main political parties, which despite holding more than 90 per cent of seats in the Dáil were unable to muster a ...”

“... enough to confirm his guilt in a suitably dramatic manner. The disobliging reader, however, may not be as satisfied with Appleby’s explanation as the surviving characters in the novel seem to be. With only a few minor adjustments, Innes could have turned any – or all – of the innocent three into the guilty party. It’s almost always possible for ...”

“... was ferreted away behind all this stimulating rubbish has completely evaporated.’ This may be part of their purpose – that people remember the past in order to obliterate it is another of Sinclair’s anxieties. ‘The English love things when they are no longer there,’ he writes in Dining on Stones. ‘A nation of ...”

“... for all these reasons they are easily romanticised. But the Bolivian left also has weaknesses that may ultimately impede its progress. Primary among these is its tendency towards an ultra-left anti-statism, unfortunately encouraged by the NGOs as they almost invariably push for small-scale ‘local’, ‘democratic’, ‘self-sufficient’ initiatives and ...”

“... at Maastricht are absurdly restrictive and could not survive a severe recession, which there may soon well be, without inflicting unacceptable damage on many European economies. But, characteristically, the Conservative Europhobes do not make that case; they merely bleat in Mercian style about national sovereignty and national independence, talking what ...”

“... elk. The interaction between wolves and their environment takes place on many timescales. It may take between ten and a hundred years for their contribution to the greening of Yellowstone to be felt, while an elk can be eaten in a matter of hours. Grizzly bears, black bears, coyotes, bald eagles, golden eagles, ravens and magpies are all common visitors ...”

“... Stobart is difficult to dislike, but there are suggestions, in the book and elsewhere, that he may be quite a hard man. Thus: ‘Only two drivers out of some two hundred refused to wear collars and ties when Edward first introduced them. He imposed them: in fact, he made them compulsory. The two who refused both left immediately.’ Deborah Rodgers is ...”

“... not merely of a past that has been shattered, requiring reconstruction, but of a past that may, even to its subject, be imaginary. The novel begins with a highly specific moment: ‘Maria Poniatowski let herself into Mrs Ellington’s apartment at 7.55 a.m. precisely (she was always five minutes early; she timed her walk that way), on the third Tuesday ...”

“... For a few weeks, between mid-April and early May, I was in Bagram, thirty miles north of Kabul, to cover the war. At about six o’clock on most evenings I went for a run. From our tents in Viper City I would jog past the 10th Mountain Division, through the lines of the 101st Airborne’s Quick Reaction Force, past the long queue for dinner, past the stinking row of portakabins and out onto the main road through the base ...”

“... or summer or winter. It knows nothing but two seasons: Dust, and Mud. Now, at this moment, in May, we seem to be getting towards the end of Mud. Mud settled in more than six months ago, and has shown no sign of taking its leave just yet. The streets have settled into their pristine ooze, and if there be any bedrock beneath the vast sucking mass which ...”

“... lessons. The children who get extra help are those who find it hard to keep up and join in: they may have learning difficulties, or behavioural problems, or they may not speak very good English. The teacher tells one of them that he’s done so well he might get to go and see the headmaster at the end of term. The child ...”

“... family he is not. Hess asks him ‘what that says about the way you feel about Jews’. Hess may have a point, but it also doesn’t occur to him that what Rotheram is resisting may not be the identification itself so much as the Nazis’ urge to label him. Rotheram’s story brushes up against Esther and Karsten’s ...”