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“... the aggrandising behaviour of Liam Fox at the newly created Department for International Trade. David Davis at the newly created Department for Exiting the European Union is unhappy with both of them. This kind of turf warfare will only get worse as the time for invoking Article 50 draws near. It will put huge strain on the Tories’ united front. But who ...”

“... and working, one might add, at once too hard and not hard enough to advertise itself by means of manifesto and provocation – could not hope to avoid accusations of gimmickry. The doctrine of ostranenie or defamiliarisation put forward in the 1920s by the Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky sought to pre-empt such accusations by insisting ...”

“... a while now, though you wouldn’t always know it. She can certainly do terse. The first and by no means least complimentary thing to say about her new novella is that as a work of fiction it is vanishingly slight.DeWitt’s first novel, The Last Samurai (2000), may at first sight seem to offer little scope for the exercise of the laconic. It falls squarely ...”

“... forced to fight on alone without any official communal support. The outstanding figure here was David Salomons, whose repeated efforts as a professing Jew to obtain election to the Court of Aldermen of the City of London was rewarded in 1845 with an Act which allowed Jews to hold any municipal office. After the passage of this law, it was clear that only ...”

“... recognised, which, at most times in his life, he has taken great care to repress. One reward of David Maraniss’s biography of Obama’s first 27 years is that it confirms a hunch about Obama’s self-invention.* His vagabond life with a bohemian intellectual mother, and the charismatic and reckless father who went back to Africa, belong to an early ...”

“... an admiring interest in him. There is nothing wrong in enlisting allies, and such alliances by no means preclude mutual criticism. But the impression created here is of an elect surrounded by barbarians too contemptible to name. The impression is complicated, though, by the respect Poirier feels for the democratic and anti-intellectual tendencies of the ...”

“... is not simply to attempt to spy on the Russians. It is to promote American interests by furtive means which range from the subtle to the sordid to the monstrous. This is the great secret that has been kept from the British public. As with war, the British Secret Service merely carries out the conduct of British foreign policy ‘by other ...”

“... never have become prime minister. John Grigg wrote of him before the Suez crisis: ‘Popularity means much more to him than it ever should mean to a statesman. Since the early days, when he was idolised by millions on account of his personal appearance and blameless views, he has never lost the temperament and outlook of a prima donna. He still smiles the ...”

“... worth fifty million pounds.’ This is Kenwright’s mother. Ferguson can’t quite believe it: David Moyes was giving me the eyes. For a minute I thought it was a get-up, a performance. Bill’s background was in theatre, after all. It occurred to me while all this was going on that I ought to check Wayne’s medical records. Was there something physically ...”

“... justice (who isn’t?). He is also, on some accounts, a victim: his unfortunate mentor at the LSE, David Held, has described the predicament the ostensibly reform-minded Saif found himself in after his father’s people had revolted as ‘the stuff of Shakespeare’, but that surely is letting everyone concerned off far too lightly. He may just be a ...”

“... Nixon. The only way of maintaining a genuinely free press would be to lower by technological means the cost of producing a newspaper. If existing newspapers and would-be newspapers were allowed to use the new printing technologies already available, and to employ only the number of people that these technologies require, the economic problems of ...”

“... they could get their hands on the necessary equipment. This, potentially, changes everything. It means that international law can no longer be relied on, and that its restraining hand can no longer be expected to control the fearfulness even of those who appear from the outside to have least to fear. The common view that 11 September 2001 marked the return ...”

“... find any such confession here. Another thing missing is the period beginning in 1981, and that means Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins and Passion. In a book whose design gives the impression that every last thought or aside has been crammed in, whole masterpieces have been left out. Another volume, bringing us up to date, is ...”

“... enough of elites say the elites. It is time to remember where democracy came from and what it means. It is time to let the people as a whole decide. It is unfortunate, then, that a referendum has no more connection with where democracy came from than Giscard’s draft Constitution has with Thucydides’ History. ‘Referendum’ is a modern word – it ...”

“... Brown is not a born liar: he is, as we keep being reminded, a son of the manse, which, if it means anything, means that. But by not actually lying, Brown came across as something worse, a man who was happy to conceal the true state of his feelings. Because what was transparent, and what Cherie instantly picked up ...”