“... American society both left and right. John Rambo, for his part, did both. In First Blood (1982), Sylvester Stallone’s character is a ‘half-German, half-Indian’ veteran, traumatised by the war, who arrives in a small town to pay his respects to a black comrade killed by exposure to Agent Orange. Mistaken for a hippie grafter, he is hounded by the local ...”

“... is unprecedented in its speed and daring and in the lightness of casualties.’ I heard Colonel David Hackworth say: ‘Hey diddle diddle, it’s straight up the middle!’ I heard the Pentagon spokesman say that 95 per cent of the Iraqi casualties were ‘military-age males’. I heard an official from the Red Crescent say: ‘On one stretch of highway ...”

“... into the shoebox of dusty old cassettes in the trunk. Could I survive for ten hours solely on Sylvester, the soundtrack from The Crying Game and The Greatest Hits of Etta James? Now ‘Down in the Basement’ is a major song and Etta one of the supreme live performers. Once, at a surreal outdoor concert at the Paul Masson Winery, marooned among ...”