“... can be a synonym for ‘everything’ or it can denote the masculine sexual apparatus. You may think this kind of surveillance has nothing to do with enjoying Shakespeare but then for him the word ‘nothing’ could be the opposite of ‘something’ or denote the feminine sexual apparatus. Of course most English-made cabinets had a secret drawer. My ...”

“... unfortunately that’s a cliché these days, too. A more helpful way to think about cliché may be not as a category but a condition, not something that a phrase is but the way in which metaphor decays (and the brighter they burn, the faster they fade: temporary, like Achilles). Once upon a time, someone said ‘the brighter they burn, the faster they ...”

“... guilty of applying a double standard here? Dershowitz rightly answers ‘no’. Such analogies may have seemed plausible at first, but they were fundamentally misleading. Indeed, they reflected a basic confusion between Presidential and Parliamentary systems of government. A CEO or university president is appointed by a board of directors or overseers. He ...”

“... italics and exclamation-mark seem amply justified when he reports that from February to May 1945 there were on the Western Front ‘five hundred cases of convicted rape a month!’ But matters got worse after the ‘unconditional’ victory. The huge heists of jewels and bullion masterminded by US officers, though they were the biggest known thefts ...”

“... influence will be exerted ... to achieve a fair and equitable settlement so that all in the area may live in peace, security and tranquillity.’ The United States’ influence was not, however, exerted in that way. Gunnar Jarring, who was appointed the representative of the Secretary-General of the UN to supervise the implementation of 242, received no ...”

“... some extent) about their final presentation of that conception. By the end of this century Gramsci may well have replaced Machiavelli in the political Pantheon. But Gramscism will probably be as dubious a phenomenon as Machiavellianism has always been. Machiavelli’s ideas were, after all, kept in a sort of irrepressible life by the diabolical legend woven by ...”

“... should be from the National Gallery and I originally wanted The Good Samaritan by Bassano. It may seem, in view of its much more spectacular neighbours like Veronese’s Family of Darius before Alexander or Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, to be a dull choice. Indeed this rather intimate picture is an exception for Bassano himself, who produced much more ...”

“... credentials; another option, second-best, slightly wishy-washy, is ‘Northern Ireland’. He may also be attracted to ‘United’ to point up the disarray of his enemies or to mask his own difficulties. ‘Official’ is useful for the old guard, ‘Independent’ good for those striking out, who also seem fond of ‘Progressive’, ‘Popular’ and ...”

“... course the Battle of France, and the battle for France … For the sons of France, wherever they may be, whoever they may be, the simple and sacred duty is to fight the enemy by all the means available … Behind the heavy clouds of our blood and our tears, the sunshine of our grandeur is re-emerging.As Churchill wrote to ...”

“... Delirium, senility, foolishness, idiosyncratic thinking: Aubrey Lewis has suggested that it may have been used in these ways as well. From the Ancients right through to the Enlightenment, paranoia has an undiscovered history. For reasons that can only be guessed at, it does not seem to have been a commonly used word, and Lewis suggests that its ...”

“... Russia’s appeal was doubtless what prompted Putin to set up the All-Russia People’s Front in May 2011, an exercise designed to broaden his electoral base by bringing in scores of pliant ‘civil society’ groups: business associations, trade unions, youth organisations, cultural funds, charities, sports clubs, even the National Union of Beekeepers. The ...”

“... browser; in addition, the paper’s content becomes its own form of advertising. Another factor may be the length of the LRB’s articles: if you’re reading this online, your eyes are probably bleeding by now. So online works as a form of marketing without cannibalising the print circulation too much. That’s what seems to be ...”

“... Flaubert claimed to his friend Louis de Cormenin that he had translated Candide into English.) In May 1857, Flaubert wrote to Michel Lévy, the Parisian publisher of Madame Bovary, that ‘an English translation which fully satisfies me is being made under my eyes. If one is going to appear in England, I want it to be this one and not any other one.’ Five ...”

“... the Taliban and al-Qaida. This policy entailed risks, as Médecins sans Frontières made clear in May. MSF, which had staffed medical programmes in Afghanistan since 1980, said that bartering humanitarian assistance for intelligence on the Taliban jeopardised the lives of all aid workers. Three weeks later, on 2 June, the Taliban ambushed and killed five MSF ...”

“... launched by an expatriate academic, to implicate the writers and intellectuals of China’s May Fourth Movement, the upsurge of reform-minded nationalists in the 1910s and 1920s, in the disasters of Maoism. He believes that what the country needs is a truly free market economy, which guarantees all other freedoms, and is inseparable, at least in its ...”