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“... in Hamlet is the place of a relentless struggle for power better described in terms of the hunt than of Providence. The idea that Shakespeare’s tragedies depict lamentable but temporary blips in an otherwise divinely sanctioned hierarchical order is one that was fading even before Jonathan Dollimore published ...”

“... Quentin Letts, for example, wrote after the ‘interrogation’ of the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, that the proceedings resembled ‘a Guardian-sponsored prosecution of the Cameron government’. In so far as he wasn’t just being funny, he was wrong. Leveson is obliged to probe politicians’ contacts with News International because influence-peddling ...”

“... treatment had gone wrong. Subsequent governments agreed. As the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt put it, the state ‘closed ranks around a lie’. Cock-up led inexorably to something closer to conspiracy.Giving evidence to the inquiry, Ken Clarke complained that he is often picked on because he’s ‘the best-known person of all those people ...”

“... to the public at large. Impatience with the old ways had spread far beyond the media. Sir John Hunt, a former cabinet secretary, broke cover as early as election day 1983 to voice the discontents of the mandarins:In the absence in our system of a chief executive with his own supporting staff, a ‘hole in the centre’ of government was perceived which an ...”

“... Britten only managed, at best, three. He often went to sleep with a score by his pillow. It was a hunt for only one prey, a journey of monotonous distinction, which never really widened. Throughout these biographies, and notwithstanding Britten’s splendid ear for verse, one has little sense of the composer taking much interest in any art but music.Britten ...”

“... author, the other by the present director general, make clear how problematic this tension was. Jonathan Evans (the DG) spells out his ‘public interest’ case for suppressing a certain amount of material; Andrew tells us of the ‘vigour’ with which he contested many of these (and other departments’) proscriptions, at least one of which – relating ...”

“... Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who were both forced to resign in a Republican witch hunt ostensibly about antisemitism but really about right-wing anger at university autonomy. I thought about colleagues at state universities in Florida, who are barred from teaching on their general education courses that ‘systemic racism, sexism, oppression ...”

“... he showed up one day at the Hôtel du Tchadien promoting the outlandish idea that it’s wrong to hunt elephants, especially for sport, and that without stricter conservation measures they would be in danger of extinction. The hunters, businesspeople, colonial functionaries and military men drinking at the Tchadien found it hard to decide whether he was a ...”

“... August it invited a select group of Washington journalists (at least one often critical reporter, Jonathan Landay, the national security correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, was not invited), and handed them a document carefully labelled as a ‘government assessment’, rather than as an assessment by the intelligence community. The document laid out what ...”

“... is why it should always be conjoined to cock-up rather than counterposed to it). Jonathan Marshall of the San Francisco Chronicle, who is in my view the most sober and smart of those who study conspiracy theory, has an elegant and minimal guess about CIA reaction to this disaster. ‘Richard Helms asked himself: “Is my Agency responsible ...”

“... died. British Generals in Blair’s Wars kicks off with a vigorous attack on Tony Blair by Jonathan Bailey, who retired from the army as head of doctrine in 2005.2 But towards the end of the book, as the commanders who served in Afghanistan get their say, the dominant tone is of anger towards the Ministry of Defence and the army itself, which emerges ...”

“... in Sunlight’, ‘A Roman Holiday’, ‘The End of the Weekend’, ‘The Cost’ and ‘The Hunt’, there were undertones and overtones of an abiding violence lurking at the heart of things. And then there were the poems in which Hecht attempted to deal directly with what happened in Germany, such as ‘Rites and Ceremonies’: It is twenty years ...”

“... began​ with a walk-in. In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001. Walk-ins are assumed by the CIA to be unreliable, and the response from ...”

“... but tinged with madness. It is like confusing the voyage of the Beagle with an easter egg hunt. You aren’t uncovering new knowledge about the universe, just a trail another human dropped there only half an hour before. But then, that’s always true to some extent of literary criticism. For Tolkien fans, as for fans of Joyce or Beckett, the ...”