“... to the absence of the Cabinet as a stabilising force and to the politicisation of the Civil Service, especially at Number 10’. She knew she’d known what she said she hadn’t when she shouldn’t, and the morning before facing the House, agreed that she might be finished. (A colleague had dismissed Michael Heseltine as ‘the sort of chap who has to ...”

“... superior brain. The Second World War interrupted and leavened his student politics, active service providing its own kind of filter. Afterwards, he returned to university, became president of the Union, wrote a few articles on economics, inherited the college fellowship of his tutor, Robert Hall, taught (inter ...”

“... out applause and ramming it through. No wonder the Liberals, and the Pan-Africanists under Robert Sobukwe, were appalled: a room full of black people had cheered the Charter through and felt empowered in the process, but a small number of white Communists had run the thing from start to finish. The Congress was their idea, they had organised it; the ...”

“... to J.E. Cookson, more than one in five of the male population of military age went into armed service. Such a sudden burst of martial fervour can only be described as a revanche, equivalent to those in France (1792-93), Prussia (1806-7), and Russia (1812) – a heightened mood combining elements of apocalyptic despair, epiphany, catharsis, but above all ...”

“... This was certainly the case in Britain where the massive purchasing power of the National Health Service supplied an effective countervailing force to Roche. Conversely, America has virtually no control over drug prices because of its small state health-care sector. Though the country acts more vigorously in anti-trust matters, it is impotent when it comes ...”

“... appropriate bonhomie to a gentleman’s confidences: ‘You may be thinking that when Myrtle and Robert made up to each other I made fun of it, and that when Myrtle made up tome I solemnly took it all in. You are quite right.’ With a little practice, of course, one comes to respond to this respectful consideration. The cosseted reader starts to enjoy, not ...”

“... American ideology. In ‘The Purposes of American Power’ (Foreign Affairs, Winter 1980-81), Robert Tucker claims to be steering a new course between proponents of ‘resurgent America’ and ‘isolationism’. Yet for the Persian Gulf and Central America he proposes a policy of frank interventionism, since, he says, the US can ‘allow’ neither ...”

“... when ‘each church recognised the catholicity and independence of the other.’ No easy matter. Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, writes in Old Catholics and Anglicans about the difficulty of trying to be both catholic and independent. But that is what Baxter claimed to be – and thought the Church of England should be. N.H. Keeble has ...”

“... the example of the Germans in basic knowledge, joined to the expansion of the British economy’s service sector, created specialised audiences for the various disciplines and broke the Whig historian’s monopoly of the readership. The anti-trust movement extended through the Imperial period, producing an inevitable reaction to the Whig eulogy of ...”

“... in Lockwood refers to Breuning’s ‘doubtless exaggerated’ estimate of the thirty years’ service that Wenzel Schlemmer gave to Beethoven as his best copyist, able to decipher those famously over-burdened manuscripts better even than Lockwood; and the latter elsewhere alludes to Breuning’s testimony that Beethoven incessantly (and at all hours of ...”

“... for a fourth term – and the more recent official announcement that Avangard had now entered service, drew alarmed and unquestioning attention in the West. ‘Russia Deploys Hypersonic Weapon, Potentially Renewing Arms Race’ the New York Times blared. ‘The new Russian weapon system flies at superfast speeds and can evade traditional missile defence ...”

“... naturally – to Sparta. Its catalogue of model leaders begins with the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, long idolised by McChrystal as a flawed but brilliant military commander, and moves on through a baffling assortment of characters ranging from Walt Disney and Coco Chanel (‘Founders’) to Martin Luther and Martin Luther King ...”

“... Rakosi (another Wisconsiner), Charles Reznikoff, Basil Bunting, John Wheelwright, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert McAlmon, George Oppen, William Carlos Williams and Whittaker Chambers, a friend of Zukofsky’s from Columbia who, among other things, later translated Bambi from the German. Quite a diverse lot, although most of them incorporated key elements of the ...”

“... taking pictures for years at a time. But when he bought a Leica in 1932 he became a purist in its service. He tended to stick to three fixed lenses (35mm, 50mm and 135mm), and was adamant that cropping of any kind was an admission of defeat. In the same year, equipped in this way, he produced two of his most famous photographs: the cyclist caught gliding down ...”

“... popularity with her accession, it could take nothing for granted. It was less than a decade since Robert Peel had predicted that it would not last another five years, and while the violent civil disorder of the early 1830s had abated, there was still considerable ambivalence towards an institution whose incumbents in the two previous reigns had done much to ...”