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“... and instantly recognisable’ African rhythm) to the ‘folk-songs’ of the British Isles like ‘David of the White Rock’, ‘Loch Lomond’ and ‘Oh, No, John, No!’ All represented the ‘music of basic realities, the spontaneous expression by the people for the people of elemental emotions’. Robeson’s early preference of spirituals to ...”

“... great good; the public was released from allegiance to the state, and defeat became the gateway to peace.’ The belief that the Allied forces had ‘liberated’ the Japanese people gradually spread, and the idea that the A-bomb damages were ‘a sacrifice that Japan simply had to accept’ began to gain currency, not least with the victims. This view was ...”

“... nations of England and Holland, upon whom the affairs of Europe now turn; and if Heaven sends us a peace soon … it is impossible but letters and knowledge must advance in greater proportion than ever.’ Peace was still seven years off, but Shaftesbury’s ‘mighty light’ would shine ever more brightly in the age of ...”

“... who’d helped plan the bombing campaign – notably an ambitious lieutenant colonel called David Deptula – saw the victory as proof of the virtues of what they called ‘Effects Based Operations’. Advances in technology, they reported, meant that the US could locate strategic targets and destroy them with absolute precision. It was now ...”

“... what amounted to pocket money. (He did better in this respect than the feeble-minded Mr Dick of David Copperfield, who is supplied with pocket money but not allowed to spend it.) Not long after becoming third earl, he fled from home for a brief period in the company of his Swiss valet, though whether this was an abduction or an elopement is hard to say. The ...”

“... Victor Pasmore – there were more eccentric talents of various sizes, like Stanley Spencer and David Jones, who were very English (or very Welsh) and not international at all. In drawings of wrapped sculpture in landscape and moonstruck megaliths Moore and Paul Nash gave even Surrealism an English edge. You could find evidence of deep-rooted native ...”

“... wave of militancy among agricultural workers erupted into a harvest-time strike at Rudston Farm. David Holtby could afford the wage increases: it was the Saturday half-day that he couldn’t stomach. Baffled and defeated, he threw in his hand and sold the farm. Winifred came back from the war to find her parents living in wealthy suburban Cottingham, on the ...”

“... When, in War and Peace, young Nikolai Rostov first rides, into action with his fellow hussars against the French at Austerlitz, he feels that the longed-for time has come ‘to experience the intoxication of a charge’, about which he has heard so much. At first he is indeed elated, but then the unseen enemy suddenly becomes visible, Rostov’s horse is shot under him, there is ‘around him nothing but the still earth and the stubble ...”

“... and chaos can be avoided. In Broken April, however, the Kanun is no longer a way of maintaining peace, but has become an all-consuming end in itself – as well as a way for the Prince of Orosh to raise money, requiring his peasants to kill one another and then pay him for the privilege. Gjorg is not the only character in the novel making his slow way ...”

“... Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit. Striding into the sunlight, we encounter Adam Smith and David Ricardo and the slightly more contemporary figure of Theresa May, whose ambition to make Britain ‘the global leader in free trade’ Hannan quotes approvingly. Free trade is the great elixir. ‘Free trade doesn’t simply put more money into the hands of ...”

“... with Iran, when his Minister of Health seemed to favour his stepping down from office to enable peace to be made with Khomeini. A shot from Saddam’s pistol settled the problem of the Minister of Health. By contrast, at one point during the Suez invasion in 1956 Major Salah Salem thought that Gamal Abdul Nasser should give himself up personally to the ...”

“... Israeli expansionism comes from the Diaries of the late Moshe Sharret, Foreign Minister under David Ben-Gurion and Prime Minister in 1954 and 1955. The Diaries, eight volumes covering the years 1953 to 1957, detail a number of incidents, including the slaughter of 60 Jordanian villagers by Ariel Sharon’s notorious Unit 101, and the Gaza raid of 1955, in ...”

“... she says as much – memory does not always play host to the right kinds of attention. ‘To make peace is to forget,’ she concedes. ‘To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.’ When one’s own terror and injury have been memorised as folktale, it becomes all the more easy to mete out injustice to others, as the Serbs did to ...”

“... When the South Vietnamese leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, tried in 1972 to block Kissinger’s latest peace initiative with the North, he raged in the Oval Office: ‘Thieu is an unmitigated, selfish, psychopathic son of a bitch. He has to be insane.’ (This, remember, is the man whose regime Kissinger wanted to prop up for the sake of American honour.) After ...”

“... do at the ceremony, in deference to his orthodox kinsmen. This was in 1978, shortly after the Camp David Accords with the Egyptian Government of Sadat. Shepherd was one of those alarmed by Israel’s new right-wing government, headed by Menachem Begin: religious parties allied themselves with the right-wingers, rejecting Labour and the old ...”