“... Like Eggers (whose memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was puffed by Moody), David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann, Moody spurns the eye-dropper technique of minimalism that was fashionable when he was a nervous colt in the 1980s in favour of a bachelor-guy pack-rat approach where everything the author has ever seen, read, felt or ...”

“... rather to my surprise) and a German of remarkable handsomeness and Royal physique. I merely held the gloves, as it were, but it was quite interesting en plein air.’ Then it’s on to Spoleto: ‘This place is mad – Festival of Fifty Queens, it ought to be called. Marvellous characters and camp little restaurants and art shops. Americans, gorgeous ...”

“... and of the same university, and their careers in literary journalism have intertwined. They are held to belong to a coterie which has been termed – embarrassingly for them, doubtless – the New Oxford Wits. Given a degree of literary fraternity, there is no reason why Amis should not have experimented in fiction with Raine’s Martian perspective. The ...”

“... disparaged the culture of gift-giving on which that influence seemed to rely. The diplomat David Urquhart’s neurosis about Russian influence at Constantinople derived from his failure to persuade Ottoman officials to accept his proposals for a free-trade treaty; his Eurocentric perspective led him to smell a Russian plot. Britain used its naval power ...”

“... teachers released. In January 1997, the ex-felons were invited to a ‘Day of Contrition’ – held, appropriately, in Salem.Crime Stoppers, another product of the 1970s, offered a new avenue of anonymous denunciation for citizens who were too squeamish or too prudent to report directly to the police. Crime Stoppers is now an organisation with ...”

“... during the Second World War Albanian campaign and describe soldiers, as Wilfred Owen or David Jones might, making their way to ‘the place where you don’t find weekdays or holidays, sick people or healthy people, poor or rich’. To possess a sunny disposition may be as much a handicap to a poet seeking approval in Britain as to come from a sunny ...”

“... down. It whispers to us in the watches of the night. Our ancestors, faithful to God and Mary, once held this whole island before the foreign heretic took it from us.’ And they will have it back again come what may. The long-awaited Framework Document for a new Northern Ireland states that die Republic intends renouncing its constitutional claim on the whole ...”

“... New Nations, organised by the Parsons-derived sociologist Edward Shils and the political scientist David Apter. Geertz quotes from Shils’s amusingly unself-conscious, Cold War-imperial foundational essay: The categories we employ are the same as the ones we employ in our studies of our own societies, and they postulate the fundamental affinities of all ...”

“... in its hand. Adie’s story runs in parallel with the account of a half-Iranian American held captive in – where else – an empty white room in Beirut. Lacking digital crayons or toolkit, he fills his blank space with imagination. Why, one wonders, did Powers settle on 1989 as his historical setting? It was, of course, the year he got his ...”

“... is dead. There are many distinguished analytic philosophers, particularly admirers of Kripke like David Lewis and Frank Jackson, who are unabashed physicalist metaphysicians. They think of themselves as continuing the struggle against mystificatory nonsense that Thomas Huxley waged against Bishop Wilberforce, Russell against Bergson, and Carnap against ...”

“... no intention of allowing negotiations about these matters (with the exception of the abortive Camp David-Taba episode, they haven’t been allowed at any time in the past 15 years). Sharon’s plans are predicated on no negotiations with the Palestinians, because any Palestinian negotiators, however feeble, would object to Sharon’s stated aim of establishing ...”

“... and his most willing slave.In the second volume, there is more space for villains as Mary is held in many damp castles. There are new rules at every move, plus plots, counterplots and torture. Mary suffers despair and writes many appeals. Bess of Hardwick and Paulet are among her tormentors. It is clear how the story will end; Plaidy writes with the same ...”

“... Brigaders, Trotskyites, Communists, pacifists failed by their tribunals. The playwright David Hare declared recently that working-class conscripts now met ‘the officer class’ for the first time and rebelled; but plenty had met the people issuing orders, at least since Peterloo. Moreover, an Army largely unemployed except in training or retreat ...”

“... join us in Jerusalem.’ The older soldier ordered the demonstrators to disperse, but they held their ground. Over the next ten minutes, they pushed the soldiers back about a hundred feet to the concrete barriers through which cars must twist and turn to clear the checkpoint. There they stopped. Some of them sat in the road and chanted: ‘No ...”

“... progressive, and in favour of freedom, though less often at the barrel of a gun, at least a gun held by an American soldier. One of Whipple’s key sources is Antony Blinken, a habitual punner who plays guitar in a DC cover band called Coalition of the Willing, specialising in tunes by the Stones and Clapton. Blinken has worked for Biden on and off since ...”