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“... storyteller, he describes very well those figures from the past whom he admires, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Those he dislikes, on the other hand, are little more than caricatures: Thomas Paine, for example, was ‘a man with a grudge against society, a spectacular grumbler’. No one seeking a fair-minded account of the American past will ...”

“... the monumental American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, the artist of choice would be John Singer Sargent, brilliant pictorial chronicler of the beau monde of the 19th century. Like Sargent, Hughes is a brilliant crowd-dazzler and populariser; like Sargent, he is unadventurous in his choice of precedents; like Sargent, a dashing but flattering ...”

“... and, eventually, illegal material. Michael was subject to a variant of what the psychologist John Suler identified in 2001 as the ‘online disinhibition effect’: the phenomenon whereby computer users feel shielded by the apparent anonymity of the web, encouraging behaviour in which they would not normally indulge in the real world. Like much of what ...”

“... to provide centrist commentary on the vagaries of the international economy. According to the Washington Monthly, Howell Raines, the then editor of the op-ed page, forbade Krugman to use the word ‘lie’ to describe Bush’s policies during the 2000 campaign. By 2002, Krugman was using it all the time, and churning out column after column on what had ...”

“... its texture, its clichés. Over the years Amis has done a lot of virtuous wincing over clichés. John Fowles is a prominent target: ‘He managed a wan smile’; ‘God, you’re so naive.’ No expensive talk about Descartes, Marivaux, Lemprière and Aristophanes can procure a pardon for that sort of thing. Other reviewers may commend Thomas Harris for ...”

“... The gentle ‘we’ serves as a disembodied voiceover as we accompany the poets to Minneapolis’s Washington Avenue Bridge, where John Berryman jumped to his death; the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas supposedly drank the 18 whiskeys that killed him; 23 Fitzroy Road, where Plath laid her head on a folded towel in the ...”

“... among patriot leaders for his shabby dress. He was the antithesis of his vain and ambitious cousin John Adams, a patriot of a more conservative kind who later became America’s second president. Revolutionary politics, however, was the making of Samuel Adams. He was assumed to be the remote master of ceremonies at the Boston Tea Party in December 1773; and ...”

“... and General Staff School at Leavenworth, and already when working in the Army Department in Washington he was picked out as a protégé by General MacArthur, the Chief of Staff: ‘This is the best officer in the Army. When the next war comes he should go right to the top.’ If this was really what was thought of him, his career structure seems very ...”

“... Frantz describe in detail one deal in which Clifford and his partner Robert Altman, well-known in Washington social circles since he was married to Wonderwoman, bought and sold shares through BCCI and ended up with $9.8m in their pockets. Kerry reveals that Clifford’s and Altman’s firm was paid some $45m in legal fees by BCCI. That sort of money persuaded ...”

“... is reported to have likened him to Abraham Lincoln. Even as he ceased to serve the purposes of Washington and Pretoria at the end of the Cold War, he continued to persuade Western right-wing lobbyists and anti-Communist crusaders to part with their money: ‘hearts, minds and purses’ was the Savimbi strategy on this front and it paid off handsomely. He ...”

“... added to an infantryman’s pack.)* We are in the sky, as the jungle is painted with napalm; in Washington DC, studying maps with optimistic generals; at home waiting, when American day is night in Vietnam; on the ground, as desperate dots struggle to occupy a hill scraped bare by artillery, then abandon it as soon as it is taken.Everyone was in the dark in ...”

“... by high-cost insurance plans. His claim to transcend the corruption of ‘business as usual in Washington’ was in this way nullified by his practice of the usual arts of political adaptation. Those compromises are remembered daily on right-wing radio. All the vehemence and animosity of the anti-Obama movement is concentrated now on handing him a defeat ...”

“... without the sex: the country mortgaged to the IMF; placemanship and jobbery everywhere from the Washington Embassy to the Bank of England, and an indecorous last-minute vote-buying exercise involving both the Ulster Unionists and the Irish Republicans. On the night before the vote of confidence that put him out of office I met Callaghan at a party ...”

“... Belgrade as Head of the American Mission to Tito. He ended the war as political adviser to General John Harding (of whose XIII Corps in Venezia Giulia pars minor fui), trying to stop young idiots like myself from starting a Third World War. Thus although he missed the early, heroic years of the resistance, he was ideally placed to observe, both in the field ...”