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“... Robert Edward Lee​ was, in the universal judgment of his contemporaries, a beautiful man. Few Civil War generals inspired such commentary: ‘He stands fully six feet one inch in height,’ a New York Herald reporter wrote, ‘and weighs something over two hundred pounds, without being burdened with a pound of superfluous flesh ...”

“... military superiors. Vann’s crusade for an altered American policy extended to a brief term of service in Washington DC in the spring and summer of 1963. He went to great lengths to convince the Joint Chiefs of Staff that American military success was beyond reach unless they altered course. When he found himself blocked from briefing the Chiefs by two ...”

“... about the culture J. Edgar Hoover brought to the FBI during his nearly five decades of eccentric service: a set of rules and customs that embrace consistency, meticulous evidence-gathering and record-keeping, and obsessive attention to detail. Trump may yet manage to escape the forces that oppose him, but his flighty and impulsive outbursts, Comey seemed to ...”

“... informal networks and shared expectations, a regime was only ever a few steps away from disaster. Robert Cecil knew only too well how much work was required to keep the country stable. He had grown up in the shadow of his famous father, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was for forty years the bedrock of Elizabeth I’s government, and learned his complicated ...”

“... not, that in the least point transgressed. At some level, however, he must have been in the service of princes; everyone was. Poetry wasn’t a living. So, in 1587, Nicholl tells us, he was acting as a recruiter for the Catholic seminary at Rheims, working on the young men within his university, and reporting back to some important Protestant about what ...”

“... his friend and neighbour, did give him an honourable mention – ‘the Nestor of the political service’ – in his famous chronicle of the mutiny. That aside, he disappeared from view. Until the summer of 2010, that is, when it was revealed that Low’s family was distantly related to David Cameron’s. Shortly after the prime minister returned from his ...”

“... The Peter Wright trial in Australia has recently brought out the full absurdity of this, with Sir Robert Armstrong attempting at one point to suggest that the very existence of MI5 and MI6 (let alone the identity of their directors) was a secret which could neither be confirmed nor denied. There is no other state in the world which behaves like this and ...”

“... done by honest men. With us, you only kill for reasons of state.’ This is the opinion of Maurice Robert, research director of the French secret service (and later Ambassador to Gabon), as recorded by Faligot and Krop in their excellent and well-researched book. It is difficult to accept such a verdict on the DGSE ...”

“... recognise a sonnet in a foreign language (French). They undertook their labours ‘in a spirit of service’, says Heaney, service to ‘a cause worth supporting’, seemingly unaware (Irish though Heaney is) that ‘a worthy cause’ is precisely the most insidious and the most disastrous temptation for an ...”

“... biography is said, though I have never seen any public announcement, to have fallen on Robert Rhodes James. If so, it is an excellent decision. Meanwhile Mr David Carlton has produced a scholarly, well-written work of some five hundred pages. The author admits very fairly that it is in the nature of an interim verdict since the official records of ...”

“... know enough about foreigners to be able to tell if they were whom they claimed to be. Moreover, as Robert Service reminds us in Spies and Commissars, in the first, formative years after the Bolshevik Revolution, when almost all the capitalist powers sent military forces to support the Bolsheviks’ opponents in the Civil War, most of the resident ...”

“... Hopjoy was here, a barber, poised over his customer with the scissors, offers a further tonsorial service:   ‘The nostrils, now?’ he inquired eagerly.   ‘Certainly not.’   ‘Ah, you’re very wise, sir: clipping does tend to stimulate. I personally find the best answer to what we might vulgarly call the hairy nose-hole is to fire it a ...”

“... Inasmuch as they defend the integrity of their inhabitants, walls and fences provide an essential service: but because they also tend to exclude whatever is beyond them, they can with fatal ease become the agents of solitary confinement. It is, of course, in the grave that womb-like protectiveness and claustrophobic incarceration are most drastically ...”

“... dies, he would like to be taken ‘to an ice crematorium. There I would like a traditional sundae service.’ At readings, where Sedaris typically signs books for hours, he passes the time by asking his readers questions designed to spark conversation. What do they do for a living? Do they know any unusual curses? (They do.) Have they ever been ...”