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“... Hey, everybody,​ how about it, huh?’ Paul Ryan said, coming onto a stage decorated with hay bales and pumpkins in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, on the afternoon of 9 October. ‘Man, good day! Good to see you, what a beautiful day, huh? Welcome to Fall Fest, you guys! Welcome to Fall Fest! Look, let me just start off by saying, there is a bit of an elephant in the room ...”

“... although many distinguished studies of the subject have appeared since (by historians such as Paul Preston, Raymond Carr and Martin Blinkhorn, to mention three British examples). My memories of Homage to Catalonia were not only of the fine, evocative writing, perhaps Orwell’s best, but of his enthusiasm for the people with whom he had lived and ...”

“... Defence Agreement. When Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos, died on 10 January, Prince Charles, Boris Johnson, the current defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and the chief of the armed forces, General Sir Nick Carter, were quick to fly out. The new defence accord is surely the reason. Qaboos had ruled for half a century and was treated as a benign head of state by ...”

“... dictionaries is dull work.’ But they are fun to read, and it’s good to welcome this reprint of Johnson’s first edition (1755). No dictionary before Webster’s Third International has caused so much comment and controversy, none has been the cause of so many anecdotes and myths, as Johnson’s. Few dictionaries have ...”

“... dead – has strongly Catholic roots. But the main point of the essay is simply that John Paul II entirely deserved the historic come-uppance he received in Managua. The Pope, characteristically enough, went out of his way to declare his special affection for Cardinal Obando, who has been tougher in his opposition to the Sandinistas than he ever was ...”

“... the French say, consulted his own genius. He got rid of his key adviser, Giovanni Montini (later Paul VI) because he exposed irregularities at the Vatican Bank run by – surprise, surprise – two of Pacelli’s nephews. He encouraged the notion that he was not just St Peter’s successor, but Christ’s. Vatican officials had to take phone calls from him ...”

“... he could make a fortune as a lobbyist for Big Tobacco instead?When Boehner passed the gavel to Paul Ryan, the Freedom Caucus declared victory, even though Ryan wasn’t one of theirs. He wouldn’t even cancel funding for Obamacare. For Meadows,the fight surrounding my motion to vacate was the thing that woke me up to a cold reality: anyone who wanted to ...”

“... literary lion, an acquaintance of Rousseau and Voltaire, the close friend, not just of Samuel Johnson, but of a broad sample of London’s cultural and fashionable élite, the celebrated biographer of the Corsican nationalist, Pasquale Paoli, a man, or so it seemed, to watch. Yet Boswell repeatedly failed. He failed to get into the Guards. He failed at ...”

“... an action which has been made into an almost miraculous victory by some of his unwise admirers. Paul Huard tells us that this silence of De Gaulle’s had its practical disadvantages, Liaison with other units was poor and Colonel de Gaulle did not always inform others of what was happening. Within his unit he was uncommunicative and not always very ...”

“... Since at one point Humphrey quotes Dryden for support for his theory, I shall go to another poet, Paul Valéry, for another point of view: ‘Credit requires that walls of coffers be opaque, and the interchange of human things between men requires that brains be impenetrable.’ Some students of animal behaviour have indeed argued that deception is ...”

“... In his prime, Dr Hewlett Johnson was one of the most famous men in the world. Almost from the moment he was made dean of Canterbury in 1931, he became instantly recognisable everywhere as the Red Dean. His faith in the Communist Party, and in Stalin in particular, was unshakeable. Purges and famines, executions and persecutions passed him by ...”

“... a secret network employing a Jordanian-born businessman, Fred Haobsh, and a CIA front corporation, Johnson Consultants. Another favourite conduit was Singapore, which received nine million anti-personnel mines, rather more than the three million people in peaceful Singapore could have needed. Iraq demanded credits and money to buy all these goods, and the ...”

“... as critical of Melina and the others (except when they smuggle in whisky and vodka) as she is of Paul Victor, whom she accuses of trying to exploit Sartre’s declining intellect. In this she is generous and dignified. But she must be suspect to feminists. These considerations arise from Sartre’s letters. Adieux, which consists of a detailed account of ...”

“... Columbia Records released King of the Delta Blues Singers – a collection of tracks by Robert Johnson – in 1961, it was the first time in decades that more than a handful of people had access to more than a handful of songs by any country bluesman. Bob Dylan got an acetate from his producer, John Hammond, and played it for his mentor, Dave Van ...”

“... is time?’ St Augustine wondered. ‘Provided that no one asks me, I know.’ Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm explore the many answers proposed by writers, artists and visionaries in the Middle Ages. ‘Medieval people’, they write, were ‘more keenly aware of simultaneous and contending temporalities than we are, and more skilled at entertaining a wider ...”