“... In 1946, George Kennan, then the deputy head of the US mission in Moscow, sent a 5300-word telegram to Washington, hoping to alert his superiors to the threat of Soviet expansionism. Kennan had complained repeatedly and fruitlessly about what he saw as America’s indulgent attitude towards the Soviet Union, but for a crucial moment in 1946 his idea that the US should strike an alliance with Western Europe in order to contain Soviet Communism found listeners in Washington ...”

“... pardons or commutations had not applied to the Department of Justice for clemency. On 2 July 2007, George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence on Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, a former chief of staff to Vice-President Cheney. Libby had been convicted the previous March of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the leak of the CIA agent Valerie ...”

“... representation’). At other times, it’s more like a grand essay in what might be called the Marshall McLuhan tradition, making oracular – if not exactly proven – assertions about the media and modern life. This one alludes to George Trow’s book Within the Context of No Context: The grid of fifty million and the ...”

“... of a United States of Europe in his Zurich speech of 1946, Bevin who was the chief begetter of the Marshall Plan. But European unity was for others: Britain still operated the three intersecting circles, of which the Atlantic and the Commonwealth loomed larger than Europe. We did not refuse economic co-operation with the Continent, as at first ...”

“... was the shopping mall. In a section reprinted here from All that is solid melts into air (1982), Marshall Berman describes the building of the expressway through the Bronx in the 1950s, and the consequent destruction of the borough. Directed by the infamous city planner Robert Moses, the Cross-Bronx Expressway cut through a dozen densely populated ...”

“... Brigham Young build a temple that still stands. Young sent Miles and his son, Miles P., to St George, Utah, where they built a tabernacle and a temple. Young commanded Miles P. to take more than one wife; he took five. He led the Mormon campaign against anti-polygamy laws, was harassed by marshals, and from time to time sent one or two of his wives into ...”

“... by extension, included. Subsequently, in a similar conversation with the Oxford sociologist Gordon Marshall, Gordon (who is as authentically Scottish as Alastair) describes watching the 1966 World Cup Final on a flickering black and white TV in a pub in a West Highland village. He was one of perhaps a dozen out of forty or fifty blokes who didn’t cheer to ...”

“... tolerate a German campaign to regain the eastern provinces acquired by Poland in 1945. As for the Marshall Plan, some at least of its planners appear to have deliberately designed it to be unacceptable to the Soviet Union; they foresaw and accepted that the scheme’s rejection by Stalin would be enforced on his satellites and clients and lead to an economic ...”

“... a residency at the Warehouse in Chicago, along with DJ Ron Hardy. As Chicago music-makers like Marshall Jefferson, Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk and Joe Smooth started making records that filled the dancefloor there, so, locally, their music began to be described as having a ‘Warehouse’ or, simply, a ‘house’ sound. House music evolved out of disco ...”

“... executor to deflect most of the money away from the obvious political uses that had been intended. George Bernard Shaw’s indignant account of a subsequent meeting of the Fabian executive, at which Webb ‘hinted that the bequest had been left to him to dispose of as he thought fit, and that the executive had nothing to do with it’, was not just Shavian ...”

“... the moment a corpse was found the hunt for morbid thrills was intense. After seven members of the Marshall family were hacked to death at Denham in 1870, ‘pleasure vans’ brought hordes of day-trippers from London to see the gore, and to purloin souvenirs. The Victorians were not dainty in their interest, and journalists were seldom squeamish in their ...”

“... were considerable holdings of dollars as a result of American wartime aid to Russia and later Marshall Aid to Europe. The Russians and their allies had little desire to deposit their dollars in America for fear of what would happen if the Cold War hotted up. Others disliked the very low interest rates which were all that US banks were permitted to offer ...”

“... the smell of manure in the streets. He loved the monarchy and had a particular attachment to George VI. When he travelled to America he would take Wisden to read on the plane. He carried on reading (only) the Times right throughout the 1940s when it was vitriolically anti-Labour, saying that he found its political opinions so predictable they were ...”

“... recent history have magnified the court’s profile; its partisan contortions in favour of George W. Bush in the case of Bush v. Gore decided the 2000 presidential election. But nothing has done more to push the court into the public eye than abortion. In Britain abortion was legalised as a result of David Steel’s Abortion Bill of 1967, but in the US ...”

“... on some forgotten but impassioned reportage from the slums by the cricket commentator Howard Marshall, or tracking down Olive Shapley, producer of pioneering social features (i.e. documentaries) with such titles as Miners’ Wives or Homeless People. When they turn to programme categories, they are good on music and musical tastes: symphonies became ...”