“... War structures and attitudes have continued to dominate the US foreign policy and security elites. Charles Tilly and others have written of the difficulty states have in ‘ratcheting down’ wartime institutions and especially wartime spending. In the 1990s, this failure on the part of the US to escape its Cold War legacy was a curse, ensuring unnecessarily ...”

“... was interviewed on CBS. ‘I don’t think we have any national interest here,’ he said. ‘I hope we don’t get involved … The Americans are out. As far as I’m concerned in Rwanda, that ought to be the end of it.’ Melvern sees Rwanda as ‘the defining scandal of the Clinton Presidency’. She describes with contempt Clinton’s playing to the ...”

“... There are the otherwise politically defunct from both Right and Left, such as Michel Rocard and Charles Pasqua, Mario Soares, formerly Prime Minister of Portugal, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the most celebrated soixantehuitard of all. Troops of British Tories displaced at the 1997 general election have found it a convenient refuge while other politicians use it ...”

“... smile which is a great charm.’ Even across the width of a fairway, the author of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ was already melting under the impact of A.J.B. Lord Vansittart, a junior at the Foreign Office when Balfour was foreign secretary, confessed that he found it ‘hopeless to avoid devotion’. The secret of Balfour’s charm was his ...”

“... Langston (a middle name – he was baptised James, after his father). Mary’s next husband, Charles Henry Langston, was an abolitionist too; he insisted they name their son after Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt. His younger brother, John Langston, became one of the most prominent advocates for Black rights in the Reconstruction ...”

“... and Antichrist. Collinson thought this was true only of extremists, those who were radicalised by Charles I’s religious policy in the 1630s, and that puritanism was initially and essentially a movement for reform within the Church of England. As a result, his work neglected the ‘Separatists’ – pissing-in rebels against orthodoxy – whom ...”

“... you do not consider Unitarians Christians.’ Coleridge’s reply was more or less urbane: ‘I hope, Madam, that all persons born in a Christian country are Christians, and trust they are under the condition of being saved; but I do contend that Unitarianism is not Christianity.’ Barbauld’s reported reply is unmoved by such subtleties: ‘I do not ...”

“... III sometimes did) against them. It was part of a ‘patriot’ language, which was used in the hope (generally vain) of mobilising independent Members of Parliament against any leadership it aimed to overthrow, and had some deeper implications important to the understanding of 18th-century ‘opposition’ and ‘republicanism’. But Burke was not a ...”

“... his children even more when they were ill or in difficulty (‘there is nothing ... so full of hope and joy to me as to see my children giving way to humiliation’), so as the claims of Alice’s ill health grew more pressing her share of parental attention steadily increased. ‘To be menaced with death or danger [has] been from time immemorial ... the ...”

“... of non-co-operation. Dorothy Comingore (now mostly remembered for her part as the second wife of Charles Foster Kane) had been disgusted by the friendly testimony of her ex-husband, Richard Collins. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I went out and had my hair shaved off.’ Comingore joined the picket line outside the HUAC sessions in Los Angeles, appeared as an ...”

“... who put the case most fervently for her generosity, tolerance, humanity, and her universalism: Charles Péguy, the socialist utopian and author of the long miracle play, Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc, which he dedicated to her and ‘à toutes celles et à tous ceux qui auront vécu leur vie humaine’. One of the speakers was Florence Delay ...”

“... banks in Europe and the US have generally got their money back. Because investors have reason to hope this will continue to be the case, they are prepared to lend banks money on terms far more favourable than they would insist on if banks genuinely were ordinary commercial enterprises. In part because debt seems cheaper than equity, the composition of ...”

“... sharp, bold stories, children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning. But you cannot claim to be a magician and fail to produce the rabbit. Let us begin, therefore, at the beginning, with some beginnings:When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite ...”

“... of refrigerators. He’s blasting with warmth out back.Mason & Dixon is the story of two men, Charles Mason (1728-86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-79). Both are drawn from history, as is the outline of their doings, and as are many of the acquaintances they happen upon en route. Mason begins the tale as an astronomer at Greenwich; Dixon as a journeyman ...”

“... women whose bodies have an enviable integrity and a fleshy, non-replicative beauty that razzes Charles Darwin.’ For Greer these are ‘failed women’, ‘spurious females’, and the chapter of The Whole Woman in which they appear, along with mainly male-to-female transsexuals, has the title ‘Pantomime Dames’. We might pause at that ...”