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“... should have known better’ becomes a somewhat wearisome refrain. Hospital administrator David Jacobson ‘worked out his own reasons why he was not at risk ... he was fulfilling a worthwhile function which was appreciated by the Lebanese’; Frank Reed ‘felt he was safe because he was married to a Lebanese’; Jo Cicippio ‘thought he was safe so ...”

“... Somalis. I don’t hear my first bullet in Mogadishu until late afternoon. I’m standing with David Shearer, field director of the Save the Children Fund, on the flat roof of the SCF staff house, hardly troubled by the thought that we’re both crisply silhouetted against the skyline. At the report, I flinch – no, I jump. I look at Shearer and see that ...”

“... Though few anticipated the agreement, it is not difficult to understand why David Cameron and Nick Clegg should have made a bargain to share power. By forming a coalition Cameron secured protection from his mutinous right wing, while Clegg became the pivotal player in British politics. What is more surprising is the degree of unity the government has so far exhibited ...”

“... were arguing vigorously that the journals and other descriptive writings of explorers such as David Thompson, Simon Fraser and Alexander MacKenzie were the first contributions to Canadian literature, and these works teem with a sense of the forests and prairies, lakes and rivers as the inexhaustible new land in which settlers had to strive to make ...”

“... heir apparent, Gordon Brown. These men are to Jenkins Thatcher’s political ‘sons’, with David Cameron trotting along behind as a ‘grandson’. (The book was completed before Cameron’s Conservatives abandoned any formal adherence to the Thatcherite slogan of reducing the role of central government.) In the process, Jenkins says, Thatcherism lost ...”

“... David Selbourne’s The Principle of Duty is described on the dust-jacket as ‘the most comprehensive theory of civic society written in English since Locke’. ‘In English’ is wise: it excludes Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Hegel, Marx and Weber. The claim remains bizarre: Locke did not produce a theory of civil society, comprehensive or otherwise, but an account of our obligations to government or the state ...”

“... of 1924 and 1928. On both occasions, FDR gave a rousing speech nominating the New York governor Al Smith for the presidency. In 1924 he lumbered painfully to the podium on crutches, sweating profusely, but in 1928 he walked with the aid of a stick, leaning on his son’s arm. Under the trousers, of course, were the iron braces that held his legs erect but, to ...”

“... quiet. At last, on 20 October 1994, the paper published the story that Fayed had paid the MPs Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton to campaign on his behalf in the House of Commons. Smith, a former Tory Party Treasurer, admitted the payments and promptly resigned as a junior Northern Ireland Minister. Hamilton denied everything to ...”

“... on Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5G network, and the bombardiers of Brexit – Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Liam Fox et al – are furious too. The industry points out that Huawei kit has already been installed in dozens of cities across the UK and to a more sophisticated standard than the US can currently ...”

“... original contribution to biology. Further, the contribution itself was of an unusual kind. Unlike David Lack’s classic Life of the Robin – also an original contribution in popular form – The Selfish Gene reports no new facts. Nor does it contain any new mathematical models – indeed it contains no mathematics at all. What it does offer is a new world ...”

“... written and of a balls-aching boredom.’ In 1960 he found something he did like. He announced to David Selznick that ‘a delightful book’ called To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was ‘going to be a great success’. He himself, he wrote, was the model for the character Dill, being a childhood friend of the author’s. The first letter in Too Brief a ...”

“... University, a lecturer in English literature, a British national who took the code-name ‘Smith’. The most interesting is ‘Michaela’, who worked in a state art-dealer’s and reported for years on subordinates, acquaintances, friends, even her daughter’s boyfriend – out of a residual belief in the system, because she felt it her duty, as a ...”

“... choosing: as well as Anthony Kennedy, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Lewis Powell, Warren Burger, David Souter and John Paul Stevens all did so. For Ginsburg to stay on the court risked ‘disaster’, in Randall Kennedy’s view: ‘The female Thurgood Marshall will be replaced by a female Clarence Thomas.’ Marshall was the first black justice on the ...”

“... is to blame?’ The crime itself is oddly anachronistic. It’s more than twenty years since David Foster Wallace placed a lethally entertaining video cartridge at the centre of Infinite Jest. Who records a videotape these days? Who sends out dozens of copies of that tape by mail? When the first tape surfaces, at a local news station in Chicago, the ...”

“... founding fathers anyway. (Both things are more or less right.) It is probably because John Smith, who led the party from July 1992 until his death in 1994, would not be prematurely enrolled in New Labour that the depiction of him here is so bleak. The man who might have led Labour to victory, thus bypassing the possibility of a Blair leadership, is not ...”