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“... at issue. In literary and philosophical discussions of the Holocaust it is often assumed that (as George Steiner put it) ‘each of us has been diminished by the enactment of a potential subhumanity latent in all of us.’ This belief inevitably leads to the question: if this is man, what does it mean to be human? If the Holocaust is unique, that question ...”

“... The split was far from absolute, and Thomas’s behaviour had its origins in what Professor R. George Thomas terms the ‘two demands he made upon his wife and himself: his ideal wish to unite workplace and family home, and his fanatical dedication to the perfection of his craft’ (Edward Thomas: A Portrait). Nevertheless, in 1908 Helen wrote ...”

“... a virtual-reality show starring himself: Andrew Warhola playing ‘Andy’ better than Norma Jean Baker ever played ‘Marilyn’. In 1968, while Soviet tanks prepared to roll into the Czechoslovakia of Andy’s origins, Warhol was writhing in agony on the floor of his New York studio, shot by Valerie Solanas, a funny woman who had appeared in one of his ...”

“... No one talking about anything else. The Speaker gave a right bollocking to Kate Hoey and Norman Baker for allegedly colluding with our oppressors in the media. A good five minutes’ worth. I’ve never seen him so worked up. Actually, it was way over the top. Gave the impression he is rattled, which I imagine he is.  Then to a jam-packed meeting of the ...”

“... filmed and the written. In literature there is no clock time, no ‘real time’. When Nicholson Baker decides to set a whole novel in a lunch break (The Mezzanine) or Olaf Stapledon chooses a timescale of two billion years for Last and First Men, no technical innovation is necessary. They aren’t inventing a freedom but exercising one inherent in the ...”

“... in exchange for Nato’s undertaking not to move ‘one inch to the east’ – as James Baker, the US secretary of state, put it at the time. Yet within just a few years, Bill Clinton began the expansion of Nato to Russia’s borders. This was ‘a tragic mistake’, the seasoned diplomat George Kennan wrote, a ...”

“... in government. In December 2003 the administration trotted out the Bush family consigliere, James Baker, the consummate oilman, as special presidential envoy to restructure Iraq’s $130 billion debt. Baker’s law firm represents Halliburton; Baker Hughes, his oil-services company, was ...”

“... others (see Dick Cheney). But it only happens when the president decides to let it happen (see George W. Bush). No one can bring power to the office by their own efforts. Johnson tried in the early days, throwing his weight around in the Democratic caucus in the Senate as though nothing had changed. He was politely, and then less politely, ignored. He ...”

“... For Palestinian artists and intellectuals his murder was ‘a hammer in the head’, as George Ibrahim, head of the Qasaba Theatre in Ramallah, put it. But right-wing commentators in Israel were delighted that a pro-Palestinian celebrity had been killed by a Palestinian. ‘He lived among snakes, and one of them killed him with its bites,’ Yehuda ...”

“... examined by two clerks from the Special Investigation Branch. Looking through the periscope, Edwin Baker, one of the clerks, saw Miss Swan’s hand posting the letter to the sanitary inspector along with a letter addressed to her sister in Woking. The stamps on both letters had been marked with invisible ink, and had been sold to Swan at the request of the ...”

“... of the book and overlooked the subversive role of his ‘chief history researcher’, Kevin Baker, at the centre). Did the devil paint the picture, as Norman Mailer might have it, while God supplied the frame (or, since Mailer’s eschatology is not easy to decipher, was it the other way around)? Mailer, too, is having a love affair with America, but ...”

“... Moorcock in the days when he was dragged along to BNP-type meetings by his editor, W. Howard Baker, ‘just for the beer’; and before he chucked his typewriter out of the office window and resigned, bunking off to a life of three-day novellas, quick money and lightning debts. Dissolve and fast-forward: now it’s an age of smooth men, of judgments ...”

“... steps’ towards its creation. But however long you pick over Bevin’s correspondence with George Marshall and Arthur Vandenberg in search of British genius, the story doesn’t fit. Secret meetings between the US, UK and Canada to set up the alliance began at the Pentagon just five days after the Treaty of Brussels was signed in March 1948, leading to ...”

“... George Osborne​ gets booed at the London Olympics. Suella Braverman cracks gags during her visit to a half-built asylum detention centre in Rwanda. Boris Johnson is illegally presented with a birthday cake. A Tory staffer throws up as the exit poll drops. David Cameron keeps his bladder full all night to achieve maximum focus during EU negotiations ...”

“... Lindbergh arrives, Nijinsky goes mad, Isadora Duncan breaks her neck, the shocking Josephine Baker came from St Louis, like T.S. Eliot, the man who pronounced printemps to be cruel. The interest is in the detail, not the thesis. A chapter on Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and another on Hitler, the great aestheticiser (‘Nazism was a ...”