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“... both to deter and to negotiate, and to a delighted designer of posters gave the impression on a David Frost programme that if he were running the country, only Dad’s Army would stand between us and the Warsaw forces. Had it not been for defence, one old hand in the Party thought, the Tories might even have lost. But once more, helped by the continuing ...”

“... shah’s ambitions for Iran to ‘become politically and economically co-equal with England and France before the end of this century’ were ‘well-known’.These ambitions informed Iran’s cultural policies. A country seeking to upend historic power relations needed institutions that rivalled those of its old colonial foes, and the circle around Empress ...”

“... year he became the co-founder and majority shareholder of the literary magazine Mercure de France, which provided an outlet for his prolific output. His commercial breakthrough came in 1892 when he published L’Ecornifleur (‘The Scrounger’), which recounts the story of a parasitical man of letters. A number of novels, many of them with ...”

“... but divided in his national identity and allegiance, for, despite being passionately committed to France, he was granted French citizenship only after two years of war service, and two years before his death at the age of 38 of Spanish influenza. If he struck many of those who met him, from Alfred Jarry to Max Jacob to Picasso to Robert Delaunay, as larger ...”

“... comprised the widowed Queen Mary, her four surviving sons and one daughter. Edward, known as David, was his mother’s favourite. The heir, the best-looking, the most popular, he was spoilt beyond redemption. The second son, the Duke of York who became the reluctant king, was the self-effacing naval officer hampered by an acute stammer. Of the younger ...”

“... Back​ in 1954, the American critic Ernest Campbell Mossner brought out a Life of David Hume that was not only a pioneering work of scholarship but also a labour of love. Mossner wanted to rescue his hero from the romantic reactionaries who typecast him as a narrow-minded representative of the Age of Reason. In particular, he hoped to challenge the condescension of Thomas Carlyle, who dismissed Hume as an associate of Voltaire and the French philosophes, and a slave to the ‘obscurations of sense, which eclipse this truth within us ...”

“... it was nearly a miracle to return three weeks later to a book contract and a steamer ticket to France.’ It must be strange for a writer, or almost anyone apart from movie stars, sports heroes or heads of state, to have a biography written about them during their lifetime. This one appeared a couple of months before Ashbery’s death, at the age of 90, on ...”

“... support from celebrities, among them Rowan Williams, Emma Thompson, Grayson Perry, Noam Chomsky, David Byrne, David King (the former chief scientific adviser to the government) and Thunberg.Less well known is their following among lawyers, farmers (including livestock farmers), medics (last year the Lancet called for ...”

“... Court. The US, having little need for the UN, is sceptical of its institutions, unlike Britain and France, who, by promoting the UN’s role, contrive to emphasise their own importance on the world stage. In relation to Yugoslavia, however, the idea of a UN Tribunal allowed the US to appear to be throwing itself into the fray against the warmongers without ...”

“... Slessor’s good works on the Upper Niger still earn her an image on Scottish banknotes, while David Livingstone became the world’s best-known Scotsman. They did not save many souls. After 50 years’ work in India, the missions could show only 3359 converts. But their influence on empire was deep and paradoxical, at once the advance guard of colonialism ...”

“... threaten war – and we say ahlan wasahlan [welcome]. We are ready!’ Both the United States and France, Israel’s main arms supplier, urged Eshkol not to fire the first shot. Lyndon Johnson told Abba Eban, the foreign minister, that his military experts thought that if the Egyptians attacked, which was unlikely, the Israelis would ‘whip the hell out of ...”

“... Iran and what’s known as the P-5 + 1 group of nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) are scheduled to conclude on 30 June. A ‘framework agreement’ was set out in April, but still at issue is what kind of access inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency will have. Iran has agreed to inspections ...”

“... we can find any places before the French Revolution, except for small refugee communities in France and the Netherlands and the ancient communities in Northern Italy and the South of France, where the totality of Jews, and not merely the elite, were integrated into the surrounding society, where, for example, they ...”

“... clubs and coffee-houses of London’s blossoming West End, and the perfect clownish counterfoil to David Garrick’s smouldering tragic hero. In his heyday in the 1760s, a summer season at the Haymarket theatre earned his company up to £5000, which may be multiplied a hundredfold for its value today. He had a townhouse on Suffolk Street, round the corner from ...”

“... now if one who comes of the same stock has not a right to give his opinion in such like cases. David Hume liked this story, and in 1741 retold it in his marvellous essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, where he wrestled with the question of whether such delicacy of judgment was really possible. Some people doubted any such thing, but he did not. Writing in ...”