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“... houses could be conceived as an insidious weapon in a ruthless struggle for power. John Kerry raised the issue of climate change twice in his first election debate with Bush, despite the likely absence of any pay-off with undecided voters. Had he prevailed, he would have found allies on Capitol Hill. ...”

“... rather restful. And the cricket reports are good.’ Under New Labour, by contrast, every day in Downing Street starts with a careful sifting of the press; there are strong responses to any stories which might have been ‘inspired’ or leaked. Enormous care is taken to try to manage the news not just in the obvious sense of trying to put a positive spin on ...”

“... for the diversity of opinion and freedom of information on which correct decision-making depends. John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government is probably the most lucid defence of democracy in these terms. The difficulty here, however, is the widely accepted ignorance and fickleness of the masses. Cognitive defences of democracy tend to ...”

“... public figures who fell from grace: Richard Nixon, his former special counsel Charles Colson, and John Newton, the Anglican hymn-writer who once captained slave ships. Nazarbayev’s life story doesn’t have this trajectory. It is 19 years since he became his republic’s leader and his rise has not yet crested. You could say that by accepting the Kazakh ...”

“... his style. Cambridge added to the mix the sense of Britain’s manifest destiny entertained by Sir John Seeley and his followers and William Cunningham’s brand of Christian Conservatism. The discussion of Baldwin’s youth is professedly intended by Williamson to exhibit a ‘model of how examination of an interwar politician’s early life can genuinely and ...”

“... of David Mellor’s bedroom attire came a drip-drip of inane yet telling details of purchases from John Lewis, which didn’t interrupt politics as usual so much as reconfigure it altogether. That Ed Miliband was revealed as the most frugal member of the cabinet, and his brother one of the most extravagant, spoke of something more important than their views on ...”

“... for the wider struggle; she writes approvingly of egalitarian marriages, such as that of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, but is less interested in – perhaps even a little suspicious of – women who were sexually free or who publicly challenged gender roles. She skates over the divisions in the movement, and rather than predict possible ...”

“... the regulators – ‘and feel that the next step is to telephone Number 11 or even Number 10 Downing Street, and lobby officials or politicians to put pressure on the supervisors to back down on their judgments.’ King was expressing a belief that bankers can’t be trusted not to try to circumvent normal democratic procedures in an attempt to secure ...”

“... we note that Mrs Thatcher loves Henry Moore’s work and has not only got some of it for Downing Street and Chequers, but has found that it makes good presents for foreign heads of state. She has also had his tapestries displayed against light oatmeal fabric on the walls of the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in order to devise a setting where the ...”

“... now just for Macmillan. In time, the Aubrey-Maturin books became a cult property. Iris Murdoch and John Bayley were fans, and every now and then a laudatory notice would appear in the TLS or the LRB, for which O’Brian wrote in the 1980s and 1990s.*His life began to change in 1989. Starling Lawrence, an editor at W.W. Norton, read a borrowed paperback of the ...”

“... wrongs. The place was ours, and we went and took it back.’ In The Winter War, Patrick Bishop and John Witherow (who went with the Task Force for the Observer and the Times) conclude: The war had everything in its favour. It was neat and tidy. It had a simple motive and a simple response … No war is to be wished for, but if they have to be fought, this was ...”

“... too much of a digest: the notes to Chapter Two contain 27 consecutive references to two books by John Barron. Despite the enormous Soviet investment in technical intelligence, Richelson considers its importance smaller than in the United States, because of inferior Soviet technology and the much greater opportunities in the West for both humint operations ...”

“... confused policy on the former Yugoslavia and its pseudo-populist sneering about ‘abroad’ (take John Major’s especially silly remark that he would not choose to spend a weekend in any of the countries he has visited over the past few years – even though he spends summer holidays in Portugal). An additional element of seediness came with the revelations ...”

“... intimate relationship with Wilson, including endless early-morning telephone calls between Downing Street and Vincent Square, is a recurrent theme of the diaries. He is perpetually seeking to become Wilson’s sole adviser, bypassing not only the Cabinet proper but Marcia’s kitchen cabinet too. One can’t help wondering whether things might not have ...”

“... a rift with her mother (whom Black idolised) which lasted until Mrs Thatcher’s ejection from Downing Street five years later. It was, obviously, unfortunate that the new editor of the country’s most reliably Conservative newspaper should have a frosty relationship with a Conservative Prime Minister. Hastings could always point out, however, that ...”