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“... some post-Mubarak continuation of it – may survive this challenge, but the illusions that have held it in place have crumbled. The protests in Tahrir Square are a message not only to Mubarak and the military regime that has ruled Egypt since the Free Officers coup of 1952; they are a message to all the region’s autocrats, particularly those supported by ...”

“... line? The retention of Normandy and the ancestral Plantagenet lands in Aquitaine as territories held in full sovereignty, independent of the French crown? Or was his claim, through Edward III, to the crown of France never to be renounced? Was the continued partition of France between the houses of Lancaster and Valois a viable solution? We will never ...”

“... overgrown caravans. ‘It’s hard to keep the staff,’ Readhead confesses. The sticks which once held up the tepee are lying in a bundle on the ground. The school has been hounded by government inspectors. Readhead has compared their visits to ‘having a distant, nosy and somewhat prudish relative poking around your house, looking in the oven, smelling the ...”

“... David Hume once remarked that the English had the least national character of any people in the universe. Perhaps this was a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness ...”

“... at the best of times – failed to perceive their good fortune; they still don’t.Although David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, had played a central role in negotiating the agreement, many unionists believed they had been conned. While the agreement won the near unanimous endorsement of nationalists in Northern Ireland, it was ...”

“... General Meetings. Normally, Tory MPs are allowed to ‘get on with the job’ rather than being held accountable as Labour MPs are supposed to be. (In practice, Constituency Labour Parties tend to take a generous view of their MPs’ deviations, if they are thought to be serious, on policy matters.) On this occasion, a significant number of Tory MPs were ...”

“... who bequeathed the presidency to his son, Ilham, when he died in 2003. The celebrations were held at Gulustan Palace, a Soviet-era complex overlooking Baku Bay. BP’s chairman, Helge Lund, and its former CEO Lord Browne had come, as a corporate press release put it, to ‘pay tribute’ to Heydar’s ‘exceptional contributions to the development of ...”

“... the Godfather merged into a single script. Not surprisingly, two highly successful journalists, David Holden and Robert Lacey, decided to turn their talents to an exposition of this fascinating modern legend. Unfortunately Holden, a distinguished reporter with many years’ experience of the Middle East labyrinth, never lived to complete his book. He had ...”

“... synonyms every week. It was with characteristic British reserve, though, that Lieutenant-Colonel David Morgan, Commandant of the 1st Battalion of the Seventh Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Gurkha Riders, set about straightening things out. The Gurkhas are the British soldiers whom, in an ugly slur, Garcia Marquez accused of committing almost unprintable ...”

“... the court I heard shouts from the narrow window above the door of the room where Ahmad was being held. ‘I warn you,’ he called to his father, ‘don’t pay the fine. You hear me. I don’t want you to pay any fine to these Zionist occupiers.’ I asked his mother what had happened. She sounded as though she was reading from a prepared text. ‘Ahmad was ...”

“... gambled his adolescent life on the odds that one of the five empty chambers of the revolver he held to his head would come up when he pulled the trigger (or so he later wanted us to believe). In his case, it is not clear which outcome should more properly be regarded as failure: ‘winning’ at Russian roulette could be seen as condemning him to more ...”

“... in an unannounced location, on a bridge, on an elevated rail track – and drops off the edge (held by a hidden harness), then hangs in the posture of the terrible photograph of an unidentified man plummeting head-down in front of the towers, printed on the front page of newspapers on 12 September. The Falling Man is somewhere at the edge of Lianne’s ...”

“... Europe, would come to the Zam Zam, sometimes for the martinis but usually to be thrown out. When David Letterman came to town to do a week of shows his advance people phoned Bruno to see if he would throw Letterman out of the bar on the show. ‘No, I’m sorry, thank you,’ Bruno said over the phone. ‘Who’s ...”

“... died of before. Men dying in the time it takes to catch and throw off a cold: ‘One Thursday,’ David France writes in How to Survive a Plague, ‘sexy Tommy McCarthy from the classifieds department stayed out late at an Yma Sumac concert. Friday he had a fever. Sunday he was hospitalised. Wednesday he was dead.’ Later, there were tests. A virus ...”

“... a field’. Probably the most beautiful and attentive drawing had been done five years earlier by David Hockney, in which Auden appears wrapped up in himself and a cigarette: ‘I kept thinking,’ Hockney reportedly said afterwards, ‘if his face looks like this, what must his balls look like?’ Not everyone was struck in quite that way, but everyone was ...”