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“... citizens (mostly Chechens and other North Caucasian Muslims) have joined the caliphate. The downing of the plane in Sinai by an IS bomb was fresh in Russian minds. But other groups also posed a threat, and it made little sense to distinguish between jihadi groups and so-called moderates on the battlefield. Idlib city, for example, is held by Jaish ...”

“... Kouchner’s horror over killings perpetrated in Kibagabaga (near Kigali) the day after the downing of Habyarimana’s plane. Using the testimony of UN officers and some very helpful maps, Péan makes the case that the murders, which Kouchner used as propaganda for the FPR, may have been committed by the FPR itself. Kouchner’s explanation for the ...”

“... collapse of the aristocratic system: servant trouble, death duties, new money, Ramsay MacDonald in Downing Street. Never such innocence again. If the Souls are remembered at all it is partly because some of their number – Arthur Balfour, George Curzon and Wyndham – enjoyed major political careers, and partly because they generated an abundance of ...”

“... Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard, then went to look at the glossy black door of 10 Downing Street for the first time. For lunch, she ate what she fancied – salad, cheesecake and not one, not two, but three glasses of bitter lemon – and for once had not cooked any of it. Then she bought a plastic policeman’s hat and a Union Jack flag on a ...”

“... a commodity squandered as I had never known it before. 22 May. Reading Frank Kermode’s review of John Haffenden’s life of Empson makes me regret a little that Empson was cut out of The History Boys. In the first version of the play Hector sings the praises of Sheffield where he had been taught by Empson, then recounts to the boys wanting to go to Cambridge ...”

“... rather Buñuelesque) by Duff C. and Lady W. being so middle-aged and ultra respectable. John Julius Norwich puts his father’s sexual success down to his ability to write bad sonnets to his lady-friends but one wonders if it was a more basic attraction. The moustache is hardly a plus, the photograph on the book jacket making him look like a 1940s ...”

“... Office agitated for foreign-language broadcasts to counter the propaganda of the Axis powers. John Reith, the director general, felt obliged to accept an arrangement that, as Potter puts it, ‘included agreeing that news editors would accept specific guidance from civil servants as to which items needed to be included in, or omitted from, different ...”

“... official statistics, half of it from Russia. In the summer of 2012, Cameron entertained Putin at Downing Street, and they watched the judo together at the Olympics. Later that year BP merged with the state-owned Russian giant Rosneft to create the world’s largest oil company, nicknamed Britneft. BP is responsible for one sixth of dividends in British ...”

“... economic and social policies which were explosively incompatible and which eventually did for John Major’s Government, and a reckless ‘re-engineering’ of the country’s social structure which ultimately went disastrously wrong for the Tories. She brought into being a middle class which, it turns out, has no overriding loyalty to the Conservative ...”

“... Authority, and pledged the UN to play a ‘vital role’, as requested by the White House and Downing Street, in helping it out. Condoleezza Rice and Powell had already chosen the functionary in the Secretariat they wanted for the job, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, its human rights commissioner. Vieira was reluctant to go, but an audience was arranged with ...”

“... in the weeks before issuing his inquiry appeal Callaghan had been in frequent phone contact with Downing Street. Might he not already have known, when issuing his appeal, that Mrs Thatcher would turn it down?) Wilson, of course, did speak at the time of MI5 and BOSS plots against him, but age and ill-health seem to have reduced him to a state of bland ...”

“... my wristwatch and cigarette case – all of which I had given him’.Channon was warned by John Gielgud that his liaison with Rattigan was all too public, while Nigel Birch, a clever, sarcastic Tory MP, teased him about the silk shirt he wore with the embroidered initials ‘TR’. Channon was acquainted with Lord Berners and ‘his crazier ...”

“... speak, under their feet. But it is hard not to speculate about what might have been different had John Smith lived to become prime minister in Blair’s stead. Whether you approve of it or not, Blair’s success in outflanking the traditional party of the right from within the traditional party of the left was achieved with remarkable rhetorical and political ...”

“... for suspending the Times and the Daily Mail. Her loathing of the reptiles rivals that of a later Downing Street consort, Denis Thatcher. ‘I hate all journalists – it’s a vile profession. Nothing is sacred; even corpses are copy.’ Her social energy and curiosity are so beguiling that at times one regrets the editors’ exclusive focus on the war and ...”