“... the States) dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Arguing against Edmund Wilson and his psychobiographer followers, Wills denies that Lincoln entertained a parricidal wish for political immortality. He was driven by no desire to slay and surpass the Revolutionary fathers, to create an imperial Presidency presiding over a mystic ...”

“... transport frontbenchers in the Commons, up-and-coming young hopefuls called Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, welcomed the transfer, and specifically stated that this would enable the Council, if it felt like it, to hold transport fares down with a subsidy from the rates. Labour won back the GLC in 1973, but lost it to the Tories in 1977, when the new ...”

“... the reassuring story of the UK’s first Euro-referendum in 1975. Then, the prime minister, Harold Wilson, had gone through the motions of a renegotiation of Britain’s place in the European Economic Community and, with that token effort behind him, shepherded the forces of pragmatism to a resounding victory for remaining in the Common Market. The ...”

“... very spirited one, too, as it gathers speed. John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, hits the pages of Michael Jago’s biography, The Man Who Was George Smiley, as a man of whom no one had anything but good to say but who was able to describe himself fictionally as no good at anything at all. He was a patriot, a novelist, a spy-handler, and an early friend of his ...”

“... Figures’, compiled by Carol Brightman, which the reader comes on at the end of the book. Edmund Wilson, one of the Better Known figures, is referred to but has no walk-on part: that marriage is yet to be. Early days with the grandparents in Seattle are mostly a matter of books. Mother and father died of Spanish flu in 1918 on the train on which the family ...”

“... but not the last volume. He’s rewriting his own history. Apparently he didn’t even know Edmund Wilson all that well, and I don’t think Wilson much liked him.’ He said he’d read Wilson’s letters straight through, liked them very much, but still didn’t know why ...”

“... idea associated with American chefs including Alice Waters and Dan Barber and food writers such as Michael Pollan. ‘I got stuck on the conjunction,’ Twilley writes. ‘What about the to?’ The farm-to-tablers drew attention to the disconnect between eaters and farmers. Twilley’s well-researched project is subtly and importantly different. She shows that ...”

“... modern sense and also aunt and niece, published a set of imitations of Sappho under the name ‘Michael Field’. They achieve, Reynolds argues, a ‘duet where Sappho is not a rival, but a partner’. But it is not only men who mutilate texts. Almost all the Greek quoted in The Sappho History is garbled, and Reynolds gives a nonsensical account of ...”

“... arms to Iraq from Aleppo. Churchill ordered Wavell to clean out the Levant. On 8 June, ‘Jumbo’ Wilson sent another shoestring army over the frontiers from Iraq and Palestine. After a month of far-from-token Vichy resistance, Syria and Lebanon were in Allied control and French soldiers of both sides lay buried in a communal cemetery outside Damascus, morts ...”

“... feel secure amidst adversity is inseparable from his life and death in war. His hero, Woodrow Wilson, also sent young men to die in war (with Roosevelt as his Assistant Secretary of the Navy), and like Lincoln and Wilson, Roosevelt seems to have felt more and more, as the war dragged on, the fate of the wounded and ...”

“... Goldsmith from January 1976 to May 1977. The Eye had been investigating possible links between Wilson and the KGB, using material leaked to them by MI5 – the first evidence of that MI5 subversion of the Wilson Government dealt with by famous Peter Wright. Lady Falkender and ...”

“... More recently, Edward Heath never quite overcame his unease with the press, while Harold Wilson could never wholly hide the peculiar fascination which it held for him. His relations with the Lobby ranged from love affair to stormy divorce. James Callaghan lacked Wilson’s flair as a political news editor but took ...”

“... used being utterly destitute of tone. It would be cheaper, and equally effectual, for Sir Michael to employ a stage carpenter to bang the orchestra door at a prearranged signal.’ ‘Why is it that the Master of Ravenswood, whenever he appears on the stage in the opera, proceeds to fling his cloak and hat on the ground with a melodramatic air? It is ...”

“... Last month​ , Michael Gove dispatched Ian Paisley Junior, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for North Antrim, with brutal indifference. Brexit was done, the DUP had been done over, and everyone could see that it was entirely the party’s own fault. On 11 February, Gove spoke from the House of Commons while Paisley Junior sat at his computer in Ballymena ...”

“... exquisitely bound volume from Notting Hill Editions, with a justly amused introduction by Frances Wilson: ‘Few writers have received more applause than Thomas Bernhard, Austrian novelist, playwright and enfant terrible, and few have bitten more sharply the hand that clapped.’ But, still staggering on, the effort continues. James Reidel, who in 2006 ...”