“... Hume, who had earlier mocked the Sidney cult, found it ‘amusing to observe the general and I may say national rage’. Shortly after the exposure of Sidney, John Wilkes – in the House of Commons, of all places – extolled Cromwell’s ‘wonderful, comprehensive mind’ which ‘embraced the whole of this powerful empire’. A few years before, Wilkes ...”

“... is alienating many of our people’ at the very time when ‘Jews are afraid of things that may possibly happen in this country to them,’ the Los Angeles Archbishop John Cantwell observed in a letter to the Archbishop of Cincinnati in July 1933. The Hollywood Question was now a political matter. Anti-semitic stereotypes were employed by both ...”

“... What is clear is that the mathematics of complexity hovers ghostlike over our every action. We may choose to be its masters or its slaves, but irrespective of our choices, it will continue to weave its logic in the core of our biological and cultural existence. Indeed, if H.G. Wells was right, it may become the agency by ...”

“... was ‘an amateur artist who, on vacations, used to paint funny faces on tennis balls’. Marvin may have suggested the packet colour: pink. It was instantly popular: ‘Packets were swiped from restaurants and stolen from hospitals,’ Cohen says. A&P, the supermarket chain, came calling, and pretty soon every diner in America offered Sweet’N Low ...”

“... Papers’, against writing about the too distant past. His ‘visitable past’, ‘a world we may reach over to as by making a long arm we grasp an object at the other end of our own table’, is more or less anything within living memory: accessing it is like ‘looking over a garden wall into another garden’. Beyond that, he cautions, ‘a succession ...”

“... chosen its candidates. I almost felt sorry for the smiling face of Peter Odili. British audiences may remember him as the governor of Rivers State in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s richest state: last year he entertained a Channel 4 film crew in his throne room with Cristal champagne, which costs more per bottle than the large majority of his subjects earn in a ...”

“... York Times piece about the incursions into Haifa Street, entitled ‘There are signs that the tide may be turning on Iraq’s street of fear’; it seemed to be well informed – until I noticed that it was dated 21 March 2005. It was an optimistic account of one of the US army’s previous failed offensives in Haifa Street. In his State of the Union speech ...”

“... with difficulty, supported by one of his ‘pretty young assistants’. The meeting with Mao may have represented a momentous ‘earthquake in the Cold War landscape’ as MacMillan claims, but it was hardly the ‘serious and frank exchange of views on Sino-US relations and world affairs’ that would be claimed in the Shanghai Communiqué signed by ...”

“... considered science, as Conant writes, ‘a higher calling’. His grandson said that ‘while he may have been born a WASP, he didn’t think that way.’ An ardent Anglophile, as the saying is, Loomis dressed British, but tried to think Yiddish. He retired from Wall Street because, his daughter-in-law observed, he ‘just totally lost interest in ...”

“... and startling ways, are worth more than a thousand words, but words must accompany them. It may well be that the importance of the photographs of the Vietnam War has been overemphasised, so that it sometimes seems as if they alone brought the war to an end. If this is indeed the society of the spectacle then mere exposure to more and more images will ...”

“... and Irn Bru, and the great new self-help ethos has had little trouble finding local imitators. It may be an indirect part of Princess Diana’s legacy to the British nation, the success of The Little Book of Calm, but self-help has had its main British impact on television. Trinny and Susannah have just come back with a new series of What Not to Wear, a show ...”

“... the story of ‘old cities’ in the region. It seems his goal is at last in sight, and on 20 May, as they prepare to leave Bakairí, he writes to Nina that he expects ‘to be in touch with the old civilisation within a month’, and to be at the ‘main object’ – in other words, Z – by August. Fawcett’s last despatch, written on 29 ...”

“... more vital to the US than oil, even if the word itself is scrupulously avoided. The Bush Doctrine may not have been given an official funeral, but Washington is now making it clear that it is willing to coexist with the Islamic Republic – so long as it does not actively threaten America’s vital interests by trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is not a ...”

“... on the Massachusetts authorities to give the men a new trial. But, Temkin suggests, the pressure may have backfired: US officials didn’t want to be seen to change their minds in response to foreign criticism. They bristled at interference even from Americans who did not live in Massachusetts; foreign advice was still more unwelcome. In 1930, former ...”

“... least a patrician unease about the growing Jewish-American influence on US Middle East policy – may have played into foreign service Arabism too.It’s also important to remember the missionary tradition from which many US Middle East experts emerged – a tradition that often involved respect and even admiration for Arab culture. Yes, American missionaries ...”