“... a name which he later changed for the same reasons that Marion Morrison became ‘Duke’ John Wayne and Izzy Demsky became Kirk Douglas. There was another motive. Grey’s birthplace was Zanesville in Ohio – a town founded by and named after his grandfather. Some of his early works, before he found a richer vein further west, piously celebrate the ...”

“... the Associated Press. Eager for more than fires and car crashes, he finally made it to AP’s Washington Bureau in the summer of 1965. Lyndon Johnson had just stage-managed the Gulf of Tonkin incident into a congressional carte blanche that would dramatically widen the US war in Vietnam. Hersh, soon the senior AP man in ...”

“... in the aftermath of the ‘loss’ of China and the Berlin Blockade, that was all that counted in Washington. The Americans did not like him; they could not spare the forces to defend him; but in the last resort he could not be abandoned. How many such figures have emerged in the Third World since!Out of that dilemma there developed the misunderstandings ...”

“... to destoy him, only to confess that after all he rather liked the guy. The Arkansas senator John McClellan was capable of a ‘kindness’ that few could notice, George H.W. Bush was (and remains) a gentleman and an honourable politician, Bob Dole could be ‘tough and mean in a fight’ but Clinton likes him. He would have liked more downtime with Tom ...”

“... political affairs’, with subordinate responsibility for the Middle East and Africa. When Washington pressed for UN troops to be sent into Somalia, Boutros Boutros-Ghali opposed the mission. Annan took the American line. His superior, Marrack Goulding, was duly removed, and Annan put in charge of all peacekeeping operations, as they would now be ...”

“... shell companies, pricing schemes and shielded trusts which operates in the Square Mile, Geneva, Washington, Paris, the Cayman Islands and other ‘Dracula zones’. This deterministic view sits uneasily alongside the evidence, presented later in the book, that seems to suggest it is a mistake to exonerate greedy businessmen and politicians, whether they are ...”

“... In October​ 1961, John F. Kennedy and the entire White House press corps decamped to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to watch US airborne forces put on a show of power. It was the president’s first foray out of the Boston-Washington DC corridor to ‘meet the people’, and in his acerbic book The Best and the Brightest, published a decade later, David Halberstam described it as ‘a real whizbang day ...”

“... school, the most intellectually prestigious, and the most powerful in terms of its close ties with Washington. This is the alma mater of Anita Hill, Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma, and of her adversary, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, and of his Senate sponsor, John Danforth, and of his most effective ...”

“... Most Saudis despise Saddam Hussein, but this does not automatically translate – as many in Washington seem to believe – into an uncritical pro-Americanism. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia, characterised by deep-rooted Islamic conservatism, is painfully ambivalent about the United States. The House of Saud is still living with the consequences of its ...”

“... for imperial adventures. Before long he had found an appropriate niche on the op-ed page of the Washington Post.Writing Reagan’s biography must have been an ideological challenge as Boot recoiled from what he called ‘the right’ towards what was becoming the centre. Boot could no longer serve up undiluted adulation, as he might have done in his salad ...”

“... world, always trying to make up for their weaknesses by giving everybody a lot of lip, especially Washington’. Even deeper in the doodoo are countries like North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran. And Iraq, of course. ‘Saddam Hussein would rather pursue his own megalomaniac ambitions, gas and pillage his neighbours than subject himself to the ...”

“... There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark. John Buchan, Greenmantle (1916) As Lloyd George’s wartime Director of Information, John Buchan urged Britain to support an incomprehensible Eastern war with the cry: ‘The Turk must go!’ At the beginning of 1916, the Turk was not going anywhere: he held fast at Gallipoli, driving off the Allied landings in January, and accepted the surrender of a British Mesopotamian invasion force at Kut, south of Baghdad, in April ...”

“... American mind. Its image launched the international ‘city beautiful’ movement and transformed Washington. It has bequeathed its bright nickname to a Tube station and its shabby surroundings in West London. The most strapping of its sideshows, the Ferris wheel, has recently enjoyed a renaissance. Yet over Chicago 1893, officially the World’s Columbian ...”

“... spirit. In 2015 the Bush White House veteran Jonathan Horn published The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, a consideration of Lee’s failure to defend his country in its hour of need. Allen Guelzo’s new study goes further. An unusual figure in the American academy – an eminent Civil War scholar who is also an outspoken conservative – Guelzo gave an ...”

“... the past. The belief that market-led development strategies would benefit everybody underpins the Washington Consensus, a set of ten policy points drawn up at the end of the Cold War, and dictates decisions at the World Economic Forum at Davos. For decades Davos was the meeting place for global elites, but since the Covid pandemic it has ceded ground to the ...”