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“... of light. But now the spikes are hawthorn, and the hedges Are foamed like ocean’s crests, and peace waits here Deeper than middle South Sea, or the Fortunate Or Fabled Islands. And blue wood-smoke rising Foretells smooth weather and the airs of peace. Even the woodchopper swinging bright His lithe and noble weapon in ...”

“... first laid down by Hobbes. For Hobbes, states need to be Janus-faced so that they can preserve the peace: preserve it from external aggression and internal interference. But Hobbes also thought that this would only be possible with an unequivocal sovereign who had the power to decide when to fight and when to let things be. Separation of powers was anathema to ...”

“... stage – I was about nine, he nearly 12 – my poor gentle father actually persuaded us to sign a peace treaty in the hope of halting our feud. I can still picture this doomed pact in its red frame, briefly hanging on the wall. To my shame, I was the one who repudiated it, ripped it from its frame and angrily erased my signature, before recommencing ...”

“... He wrote The Seven Journeys at this time (it wasn’t published until 1944) and made friends with David Archer, the publisher and bookseller whose Scott Street Arts Centre in Glasgow was a venue for the avant-garde of the interwar years. Graham met Dylan Thomas there, who was sufficiently impressed to include a Graham poem at the end of one of his own ...”

“... park lit with a curious violet effect. An interviewer in Diary of a Young Soul Rebel thinks of David Lynch and Hitchcock in relation to this scene, and certainly those names evoke the right sort of frozen ceriness. But there is excitement in the shot, too – a sense of sexual adventure. The mood is lyrical rather than frightening, and it is into this mood ...”

“... for the crimes committed in the course of it, to claim unique authority as lovers and preachers of peace. To explain this difference Ian Buruma cites, with some qualification, Ruth Benedict’s useful distinction between a ‘guilt’ culture and a ‘shame’ culture. In the former, offences against social norms have to be expiated by confession and ...”

“... her to meditate on language, in swoony paragraphs. She promises us ‘the word that does not bring peace but a sword’. Later, we are told about ‘the word that is spirit, the word that is breath, the word that hangs the world on its hook’, and later still: ‘the whirling word. The word carried quietly away at my side, the word spun out, vigorous, precise ...”

“... with the censor. In this struggle, writers portrayed themselves with sly disingenuousness as David confronting Goliath. In reality, most writers believed that they, and not the state, would have the last word. And so it has proved. Ben Jonson’s lines are apposite: Nor do they aught, that use this cruelty Of interdiction, and this rage of burning; But ...”

“... death ... Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals’, urgent beckoning sounds, oddly combining peace and shrillness. Stevens’s line is cited by Donoghue to show that writers in English ‘find the letter s troublesome’ and that Stevens would not have called sibilants ‘heavenly’, or ‘heavily’. But Whitman did, near enough. Stevens thought they ...”

“... in a cantonment on the plain to the east of Kabul, and for two years Afghanistan enjoyed an uneasy peace. In November 1841 rioting broke out in Kabul. Rebellion spread through the country, co-ordinated by Akbar Khan, the Dost’s son, and by Christmas Day the British – far from aid, and worsted by the guerrilla tactics of the Afghans – had agreed ...”

“... not getting dressed, Louise directs the Mulholland Trust, which involved itself in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Glass loved her once, but their marriage has been passionless for some time. He stays with her for the money, and she stays with him in order not to risk offending her father, whose famous rectitude includes a ‘bitter disapproval of ...”

“... a failure of statecraft on a scale unmatched since Lord North lost the American colonies, David Cameron has managed to convert a problem of party management into a constitutional crisis. The result of the EU referendum raises serious constitutional issues which haven’t been properly confronted. The media are now comfortably immersed in the political ...”

“... it was not forthcoming. Unfortunately, the maternal, caring, compassionate and, therefore, peace-orientated instincts of women are not the ones that will make them into world leaders. To become such a leader, ambition and aggression must play a great part – and the old idea that if women were in charge wars would cease has little validity. In ...”

“... said they were about to present a ‘take it or leave it’ deal. The director of Mossad, David Barnea, travelled back to Doha. He said Israel was ready to withdraw from the so-called Philadelphi corridor (along Gaza’s southern border) in a potential deal. But hours later, Netanyahu gave a televised address in which he said that Israel must occupy ...”

“... or at least its dedicated mourner. He has written a polemic against John Major’s Government and David Owen, the EU mediator in the remains of Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995, for their connivance in the ferocious dismantling of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is keen on Major’s New Labour successors, and confident that Tony Blair’s support for the Milosevic ...”