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“... one-liner, more redolent of Chicago under Prohibition than Downing Street, was uttered by Lloyd George. The Premier was reflecting upon one of his constant obsessions: the British press. His method of dealing with it, not wholly abandoned to this day, possessed a buccaneering simplicity. He ennobled the newspaper tycoons, distributing titles with a zest ...”

“... 1936 – a bad period not only in England but throughout Europe – he left a widow and the young George in somewhat reduced circumstances. The change of name from Behar to Blake was understandable enough. However, there were further complications which did not help the boy, then rising twelve: one of the Behar sisters had married a banker, Henri Curiel, who ...”

“... both safety and advantage. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments On 13 March President George W. Bush wrote to four Republican Senators informing them that he would not be ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing worldwide emissions of ‘greenhouse’ gases, especially carbon dioxide – the same protocol Al Gore as Vice-President had ...”

“... viewy’, a Roman Catholic who converted to Christian Science, became private secretary to Lloyd George in the First World War, and the British Ambassador in Washington in the Second; Robert Brand, thought by Jan Smuts to be ‘the most outstanding member of a very able team’ in South Africa, who became an investment banker and remained easily the best of ...”

“... international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.’ According to Richard Clarke, that was George W. Bush’s response when he was told that international law did not permit the retributive use of military force after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.* In fact, there was no legal impediment to the intervention in Afghanistan. A sympathetic ...”

“... play while you’re working. Play is an essential feature of Adam’s Rib too, also directed by George Cukor, as were eight other Hepburn films. The director’s touch here is as light as it was in the earlier work, but darker questions surround the practice of play. There isn’t any real holiday from work, and marriage itself is a matter of ...”

“... you on your choice’) decides to honour his Chicago colleague Spats Colombo, played by George Raft, on his birthday. Raft says his birthday is some months away, the boss says there no harm in doing things early, meaning only the cake matters. We have seen the vast cake being loaded, not with the traditional dancing girl, but with a man and a gun. I ...”

“... from the middle of the First Boer War onwards’ adds a comic touch. Even more than Lloyd George, Churchill baffles the biographer. This is partly a matter of fatigue. The huge scale of his achievement and of the records about it are enough to wear out all but the most robust and indefatigable: but keeping right on to the end of the road is not the ...”

“... Mrs Castle is particularly good at bringing to life some of the personalities involved. There is George Brown, ‘bellowing on the telephone to No 10, insisting that Harold came over at once and pouring out insults to him on the phone’. There are occasional lunches and dinners à deux with Roy Jenkins, sometimes at the Connaught (‘another demonstration ...”

“... Indeed, Clinton’s rise is matched in American history only by the equally spectacular fall of George (‘Desert Storm’) Bush, the collapse that put the Arkansas Governor in the White House in the first place. Newt Gingrich rode the Contract with America to victory in 1994, giving Republicans their first control of the House of Representatives under a ...”

“... the worst threats before they emerge.’ Last month, in a commencement speech at West Point, George W. Bush announced an expansive new policy of pre-emptive military action. The graduating students greeted the announcement with enthusiastic applause, thus demonstrating not only their patriotism, but also a certain lack of historic awareness. In 1837, the ...”

“... of the films showing at the London Film Festival later this month is The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, directed by Philip Noyce, and based on Graham Greene’s novel. (It isn’t the first time the book’s been adapted for the screen: Mankiewicz made a version in 1958 which Greene, who anyway tended to have a very low opinion of ...”

“... of my 21st birthday. The guests included Norman Cameron and Tom Driberg, now both dead, and ‘Michael Innes’, still alive. We had dinner in a private room at the George restaurant, now also dead. Halfway through dinner the waiter asked to speaks to me in private. Then he said: ‘I am a respectable married man and if ...”

“... to be made real through fiction. Her engagement to a musician, her strange one-day marriage to George Bowden, her subsequent pregnancy by the musician’s brother, her lesbian escapades, her selection of Ida Baker as remorselessly self-effacing lifelong friend – a sort of understudy, dresser and sweetly poisonous competitor to other friends – all have ...”

“... be served alone as a supper dish for tired children’. And parents get spoiled too: George Mott’s Spinach and Bacon Salad is finished off by adding hot honey. But, for the grown-ups, the final verdict must be harsher. We seem to deserve each other, or at least to deserve to be reminded of hard truths, and Quentin Crisp is on hand to provide ...”