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“... of the ‘Cockburn Machine’, geared up to sabotage every institution in Britain in the event of war. Reading The Broken Boy, I realise that there is indeed a sort of ‘Cockburn Machine’, still operated in different parts of the world by the three brothers. This is the belief in the primacy of journalism by leak, the insistence that journalism is not so ...”

“... some statistician of the absurd will tell us that the tonnage of books about the Second World War has finally exceeded the weight of ammunition expended in its course. On the face of it, the scope and variety of this literature is enormous. It ranges across much of the globe, from Normandy to New Guinea, from Tunis to Moscow. It recounts the exploits of ...”

“... To the left of the entrance to The Spanish Civil War: Dreams + Nightmares (the exhibition runs until 28 April) is the Sargent Room. At the moment it contains three big World War One pictures: Sargent’s own Gassed, Stanley Spencer’s picture of wounded men on stretchers in Mesopotamia and Nevinson’s of troops crossing a desolate, shell-pocked battlefield ...”

“... If Galtieri’s junta had prepared for war in 1982, even to the minimal extent of equipping Argentinian fighter-bombers properly, Mrs Thatcher’s Enterprise of the Falklands would almost certainly have failed, thereby ensuring that Argentina would still today be ruled by a triumphalist military élite, inept mismanagers of a decaying economy, impotent spectators of the country’s social disintegration, and of course both cruel and corrupt ...”

“... stories Mrs Henderson, is a gentle, helpful, observant boy growing up during the Second World War, a boy who is eventually bewildered by what human beings do to each other. He seems reluctant to define himself and Wyndham never gives him a name. At the beginning of his story ‘Obsessions’ he quotes Valéry’s Monsieur Teste: C’est ce que j’ai ...”

“... only after his death, while Woyzeck, the first – and for some fifty years, the only – working-class tragedy in German, could not even be read until 1879, when it became technically possible for Büchner’s first editor to restore the faded ink of the manuscript. In addition there is an astounding short story, ‘Lenz’, that takes an actual 18th-century ...”

“... The debt crisis confronting the Obama administration is the product of war and taxes. There is little dispute that the origins of the crisis predate Obama’s election. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the US had a $2 trillion budget surplus. Many believed that if the country merely continued on the path set by Bill Clinton, the national debt, then $5 ...”

“... it is not about two writers but about a political era that should now be over for good, the Cold War. Orwell’s reputation was constructed as an intellectual anti-Soviet missile site and even today, when the rest of Orwell has emerged or re-emerged, it still remains frozen in the 1950s. Tony was, of course, as anti-Stalinist as anyone, and bitterly critical ...”

“... mark of Western civil societies. Among its unintended consequences are the unravelling of the post-war political settlements in the major Western countries and a burgeoning legitimation crisis for their market institutions. Moreover, our economies are being outpaced by East Asian societies which have adopted few of the central norms and practices of Western ...”

“... in the middle classes. But they are picking up support among the working members of the working class. Skilled workers, in particular, have now crossed over in large numbers. In 1974, Labour had 49 per cent of their votes, the Conservatives 31; in 1979, each had 45 per cent; by 1987, Labour had 34, the Conservatives 43. Notwithstanding the new blue suits ...”

“... grand staircase, a fantastical confection, and peek into the Marconi wireless office and a first-class suite. Every Saturday there is a Titanic Dinner Show. The smaller but still substantial artefact exhibitions are lucrative: more than 25 million people have paid ($32 for an adult and $24 for a child in Las Vegas, plus tax) for the opportunity to hear ...”

“... of being the one great power which could in no possible circumstance acquire European territory by war, but it still did not want Russia to do so, and it became a cardinal point of British policy that Turkey should be protected for as long as possible, which plainly made Russia a potential antagonist. Shortly after the defeat of Napoleon, the young Grand Duke ...”

“... of Smolensk. Of course, Kutusov’s reputation with posterity owes much to Tolstoy’s portrait in War and Peace, where the drunken old womaniser is depicted as a Russian father-figure of great cunning and latent genius, capable, in some mystically inspired way, of drawing the last ounce of effort out of the stolid, brave moujiks that made up the mass of the ...”

“... intellectualism of Salisbury is democracy’s opposite: pessimistic, anti-urban, openly seeking class conflict in order to strengthen the hand of authority and the ancien régime. Salisbury was skilled in questions of international affairs, and in matters of Church politics, admirably discussed by A.N. Porter and E.D. Steele. Other essays give specialist ...”

“... bed and a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums – we feel her Desire as a burdensome weight. When the War starts, Cook suffers from nerves, and Wyndham still plans to go back to RADA to finish rehearsals for Hedda Gabler. ‘A German play,’ explains her mother’s companion, straight out of Ivy Compton-Burnett: ‘you don’t mean you’re still going ahead ...”