“... al-Qaida and state actors share a common language that is part of the ‘cultures of war’. Both George Bush and Sayyid Qutb, the ‘philosopher of Islamic terror’ in the eyes of many Western observers, oppose tyranny, support ‘true social justice’ and are in favour of the alleviation of suffering. In the name of these abstract ideals they perpetrate ...”

“... advantage, this never happened. Instead, the US, having bailed out Britain, came in with the Marshall Plan in 1948, making itself the linchpin of (Western) European recovery for the foreseeable future. As Churchill had said in 1946, an ‘iron curtain’ had descended on Europe, separating West from East along the lines of military control established in ...”

“... funds. The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the ...”

“... era of American power since the Second World War. The article seemed to be modelled on one of George Kennan’s famous memos staking out the terrain of the Cold War. As a source of inspiration, the Kennedy moonshot moment has some appeal. But within the Biden administration, it was the 1930s and 1940s that captured the imagination. Jigar Shah, who runs a ...”

“... full in the excellent Salmagundi, Berlin says that he likes the ‘positive’ examples of Lloyd George and Franklin Roosevelt, not least because they insulated their respective societies from socialism tout court. One assumes that, with his sense of history, he means the Lloyd George who was the patron of Field Marshal ...”

“... the media of a wide range of stereotyped individuals and not just football heroes – for example, George Best appears in both volumes, but John McEnroe only in Hargreaves. Gender distinctions are discussed in both books but while Elias/Dunning have little to say on the subject other than that ‘sport is a male preserve,’ Hargreaves discusses the theme at ...”

“... that it was ‘devoid of content’. Whenever he’s asked about his role in the case that put George W. Bush in the White House, he sneers: ‘Get over it!’ Biskupic believes that he might have more influence if he trimmed his ideological sails. This seems unlikely, since it is through the sheer obduracy of his vision that he has made himself felt. If ...”

“... in December 1937. F.W. Dupee, Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy were also on the masthead, as was George L.K. Morris, artist, art critic and moneybags for the new venture. Despite Morris’s largesse, most of the editors and all of the contributors were at first unpaid. For a young writer, however, appearing in the magazine offered recognition and social ...”

“... Latin as his first language, fondly remembered how he and his tutor, the Scottish humanist George Buchanan, ‘did tosse our declinations, and conjugations to and fro … by way of a certaine game’, and inveighed against the majority of schoolmasters, who ‘in liew of gently bidding children to the banquet of letters, present them with nothing but ...”

“... allowance might have to be made for the senses in which Cyril Connolly was ‘influential’ or George Orwell a ‘man of letters’. But I would be surprised if any serious contender for that title between about 1930 and 1980 were more prolific than VSP. Gore Vidal, always a master of understated hyperbole, praised Pritchett’s criticism by saying ‘it ...”

“... they fly. As a result companies found it useful to register their ships in Liberia, Panama or the Marshall Islands: anywhere with open registries. Panama was attractive to US shipowners because of the convenience of the canal and because its currency was pegged to the dollar, but especially because its safety regulations were lax. By 1970 flags of convenience ...”

“... even if they did not encourage him in his deviant designs. Among his colleagues at the BBC were George Orwell and Louis MacNeice, both of whom he greatly admired; and there were others, their names by now probably forgotten, who brought conviction and real knowledge to Empson’s side of the fight. One such, Ralf Bonwit, a formidable, dedicated Japanese ...”

“... itself to be ‘cruel and unusual’. In Furman’s case only William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, the Court’s one black member, voted to strike down nearly all existing capital statutes on the grounds that they were intrinsically in violation of human rights or communal dignity. As Marshall put it in another ...”

“... were the creation of Nato as a bulwark against Soviet aggression, and the provision of Marshall Aid that put postwar Europe back on its feet.Ghervas’s​ chapter on the postwar order , however, is not titled ‘The Spirit of DC’. Truman’s creations were Atlanticist institutions, not European ones. Something different, which was American ...”

“... of the inspector general’. In his just published memoirs, Bremer dwells on infighting within George Bush’s cabinet and his claim that he tried and failed to get the number of US troops in Iraq increased. Bremer also says that he ‘realised there would be corruption at many levels of Iraqi society in the months and years to come. But I also hoped that ...”