“... the way to Iran. In contrast to its fortified Baghdad namesake, the Helmand Green Zone is where most of the fighting takes place. Its irrigation ditches, hedgerows and walled compounds allow the Taliban to fight a classic guerrilla war that can seem very similar to the one fought by the Vietcong, complete with a complex network of trenches, tunnels, traps ...”

“... or less exactly as much as I thought I was going to. And perhaps the underlying thing I missed most was the sheer lightness of pre-Covid choice: the airiness, the impermanence, the lack of consequence of opting for a coffee at this café rather than that, lamb for dinner because we had chicken yesterday, getting the new Ian Rankin because I saw it in the ...”

“... what they must. On 29 May, the Times published another front-page Kushner story, this one by Glenn Thrush, Maggie Haberman and Sharon LaFraniere. The attack now began at the beginning – ‘The most successful deal of Jared Kushner’s short and consequential career in real estate and politics involves one highly ...”

“... to have one skin too few; boundaries are continually violated, the world impinges. The pianist Glenn Gould, at one stage in his life, took his blood pressure hourly; he tried to turn down the sensory excitements of the outside world, wearing grey and brown and eating arrowroot biscuits, reducing input to a minimum and aiming to live like his own ...”

“... it was amazing, unlike any other, if not quite, as he later summed it up, ‘one of the most peaceful, one of the most beautiful, one of the most love-filled conventions in the history of conventions’. Amazingly, most of the major figures in ...”

“... cited for keeping his squadron together in dangerous missions over Germany with fewer losses than most. Altogether, in uniform, he logged 1800 hours of flying, and was widely known for the care of his preparation for every mission. Once, over Bremen, where his target was a munitions plant, he went in for a second run after failing to spot the target on the ...”

“... for themselves or for the musicians they represent. So it’s strangely difficult to answer the most important question about Spotify’s business model: how much does it pay artists? In The Spotify Play, their account of the company’s rise, Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud describe the way the company’s early deals with the record labels were ‘so ...”

“... having an affair with a married woman. Blunkett recorded their conversation. The tape became the most important single piece of evidence in the phone hacking trial that has just come to an end. Blunkett avoided confirming Coulson’s story, saying that he was entitled to a private life. But he had a question of his own: how did Coulson know he was having an ...”

“... some of you but guess what, we’re still going to have good lives and do better things than most of you ever will.’ Further: ‘Get over it. We’re here. I don’t have much to say.’Rhodes took the mic. ‘What man means for evil, God can use for good.’ Tarrio announced a lawsuit against the Department of Justice. ‘With the success of our ...”

“... like Scott, Pushkin, Byron, Rousseau and Marlinsky (a producer of Caucasian adventures and the most popular Russian novelist of the 1830s). This is how Pechorin is first described: He was of medium height and well proportioned; his slim waist and broad shoulders indicated a strong physique … His dusty velvet frock coat, fastened only by its two lowest ...”

“... could see something was disturbing the surface, but not its shape, full girth, or length.’The most satisfying passage in the book describes the arrest of Marcelo Odebrecht, CEO of Latin America’s largest construction company, who led a price-fixing cartel and paid eye-popping sums in bribes. At six a.m. on 19 June 2015, Pontes and Anselmo showed up at ...”

“... says in his excellent handbook to Palmer: a carved ivory. The Valley Thick with Corn is one of the most beautiful expressions of what Palmer’s son once astutely noted in his father, ‘a certain sentiment of surpassing fruitfulness’, and its fecundity lies as much in its manner as in its subject matter: ‘We must not begin with medium, but think always on ...”

“... job at the NSA, where she administered pension benefits. Both parents had top security clearances. Most of their neighbours worked for the government or the military and at barbecues nobody talked about their job. Normality was cover. Permanent Record seems to have been written reluctantly: a memoir by a celebrity dissident dedicated to the cause of digital ...”

“... or victims of criminals, this last life is the one we have easiest access to.Many, perhaps most, representations of crime, whether the event is supposed to occur in fact or in fiction, give the impression of being about something else. Something instead of crime or something as well as crime. This impression doesn’t always arise, of course, but it is ...”

“... fiction’ but Brennan largely confirms its accuracy.Hilda, his mother, was ‘my closest and most intimate companion for the first 25 years of my life’. (The intensity of the attachment was due in part to Hilda’s loss of a baby boy the year before Edward was born.) Their relationship, Said wrote, had ‘shattering results for my later life as a man ...”