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“... I suspect, which he has kept out of sight. It clearly troubles the biographer, and unsteadies his aim even in those areas where his research is soundest. The main theme of An Autobiography’s account of Trollope’s early years at the Post Office is his superior Colonel Maberley’s unwavering and unjust hostility. Even after three decades, Trollope’s ...”

“... think of themselves as liberals or progressives. Fear of Trump seems to have driven them into the arms of the deep state, whose prevaricating representatives – in particular Robert Mueller, who before being appointed as special investigator into alleged Trump-Russia collusion was the longest-serving director of the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover – have been ...”

“... Cuban government’s blessing, in makeshift boats that sank. The so-called freedom flights Lyndon Johnson and Fidel agreed on to relieve the drowning problem brought a massive influx of unskilled labour to South Florida and New Jersey, while draining the island of professional and technical resources. Rioting arrivals from the Mariel boatlift cost Bill ...”

“... Burnett suffered from mental illness. ‘A mental defective’ was the initial diagnosis from an army psychiatrist when Burnett had a nervous breakdown in 1943. Several weeks later he was described as having ‘nervous spells … during which he becomes extremely tense, cries freely & shows a tendency to destroy furniture’. This would have been ...”

“... its 1967 borders. Kissinger, however, was never interested in such an agreement. Ostensibly, his aim was to wage the Cold War and expel the Soviets from the Middle East. He therefore undercut Rogers’s efforts to procure a fair settlement and, on succeeding him as Secretary of State, made no attempt to get one himself. Shlaim is surely right in saying that ...”

“... of Mencken, not to mention Svetonius’s Lives of the Caesars; and into the garbage goes Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, perhaps the finest book of profile-essays ever written ... I am not, of course, claiming a place for myself among the masters I have named above. (Although, when Lamb is at his most whimsical, I sometimes think I could go a couple ...”

“... is, had only the ‘Brutus legend’ to guide him to his own history; four centuries later, Dr Johnson was little better informed. Some antiquarians may have noted that the names of the days of the week bore witness to a pagan history (though an Anglo-Saxon, not a Scandinavian one). But neither Vikings nor sagas existed in learned or popular ...”

“... son of a bitch. He may be a sinner, but he is not the Antichrist.’ Just as Farage needed Johnson and Gove, Trump crucially relied on men who were willing to gamble with the polity as a whole. The fact that Mitt Romney – a cartoon plutocrat – became the main face of opposition to Trump within the party probably helped him further. But some ...”

“... I stood outside the High Court in Edinburgh, listening to Salmond again. It was the day that Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond’s chosen successor as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, announced the start of the UK-wide lockdown. Salmond, who had just been acquitted of thirteen charges of sexual assault against nine women, appeared to be ...”

“... Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin. Schiaparelli’s sporty, dress-yourself look suited women of action. Amy Johnson, who flew solo to Australia, was one, and, in a rather different vein, Mae West in Every Day’s a Holiday. West – whose billowing curves billowed a little more at each fitting, causing the somewhat snappish couturière considerable annoyance – was in ...”

“... know the image by heart and they watch the door.I don’t mean to marshal these thoughts, as Johnson said, into a school and call it an academy, but I believe people in Britain experienced an entanglement with technology and reality during that trial which had an effect on the nation’s character. Many of the great tabloid-frenzied dramas to follow were ...”

“... who had voted for her must be ‘respected’, as though she were a warlord and they her private army, while some in the crowd chanted ‘Den-ver! Den-ver!’ – meaning that she should take the fight all the way to the Democratic convention in August. And then there was John McCain, in what seemed to be a high school auditorium somewhere in Louisiana (even ...”

“... character in English literature, unmitigated by the humour and grudging respect that breaks out in Johnson on the Scots. Among the small would-be nations Byron also tried to help was Armenia, not mentioned in this book. After arriving in Venice in 1816, he provided money for an Armenian dictionary, and did some work on it himself. Is there a statue to him, or ...”

“... the Thames. Waldorf and Nancy hosted epic house parties there, welcoming, among others, Shaw, Amy Johnson, Roosevelt (F.D.), Henry Ford, Asquith, Charlie Chaplin, J.M. Barrie, Churchill, Henry James, Edith Wharton, kings and queens and Mahatma Gandhi. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand spent a weekend there not long before his assassination. By the 1930s, the guest ...”

“... severely every time they dare to take advantage of their position to deceive the citizens or to arm bigotry and royalism against the Republic.’Fouché went on the offensive and helped topple Robespierre, imagining he would replace him. But the events of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) marked a turning point in the revolution. What had initially appeared to be ...”