“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Fichte, gay fiction is considered to be little better than a joke, usually a dirty one; there may or may not be a more pronounced homophobia in Germany than in other European countries, but I suspect the differences are more reasonably attributed to the fortuitous absence of ‘out’ gay novelists of the first ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... road. A map is a memory: it’s a representation, a re-presenting of something that has been. It may look good on paper – and that’s already a fiddle, a projection of a sphere onto a plane – but it’s always a botched job and mapmakers know it. Cartographic language is loaded with confessions of omission and commission: map silences, map fictions, map ...”

“... and 1957. Under de Gaulle, he held portfolios for France’s colonies in Africa and elsewhere. In May 1962, he was appointed to the European Court of Justice.Lecourt came to Luxembourg with a particular set of associations and convictions. Alongside his role as a deputy and minister for the MRP, he had been active since the late 1940s in the Nouvelles ...”

“... problem so much as a problem of life and representation. Make silly jokes about cancer and you may or may not get it at some point; describe it in a bald minimal way, a flouncy 1980s way or the would-be hard-biological way currently fashionable, as misfortune or genes or metaphor or punishment, and the result will be ...”

“... through the corridors of a hotel or to and from the house of an absent friend-cum-rival whom he may or may not have murdered, its obsessive attention to surfaces and objects, or the geometric pulsing of a lighthouse’s ‘cône fulgurant de clarté’ through the black night, over and over – in all these aspects, the ...”

“... and you think of roses. A jasmine scent, and you think of jasmine blossom. The representations may be better or worse – you may smell a rose perfume and think: this smells nothing like real roses – but they are imitations even so, however pale. The genius of Chanel No. 5, invented by Coco Chanel in collaboration with ...”

“... a fellow Yorkshireman, telling him: ‘It would have made a difference, you know’). But while it may be true that he needled Tory as well as Labour administrations, provoking Harold Macmillan to inquire of his minister of defence what could be done to ‘suppress or even get rid of Mr Chapman Pincher’, his outlook and instincts were profoundly ...”

“... friendly texts from Tony Blair (‘I’m no use on police stuff but call me after that because I may be some help on Commons’). Blair also offered advice to Rupert and James Murdoch. Peter Mandelson offered to prep Brooks for an appearance before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Two Conservative peers gave glowing character ...”