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“... origin story’ for the US, one that begins with the arrival of a ship in the British colony of Virginia with a cargo of twenty enslaved African people. The book itself is the culmination of a project by the New York Times Magazine, marking four hundred years since that first slave ship arrived in America. It attempted to show that ‘the inheritance of ...”

“... intimates, the Webbs and Wells, and had a joky intimacy with persons as diverse as Lady Astor, Virginia Woolf and the heavyweight champion Gene Tunney. He was sporadically in touch, affectionate and censorious, with Mrs Patrick Campbell, and kept a kindness for scapegraces such as Lord Alfred Douglas and Frank Harris, in whose biography of Shaw the subject ...”

“... his marriage. He is not the first to have done so: he acknowledges and borrows from Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s Marina and Lee, though he is able to add to that mostly American account thanks to the KGB transcripts. The newly married couple’s apartment was bugged, and their early married life, their frequent strife and their makings-up, are ...”

“... players advanced. 21 Your average fan: under his cap a squeamish lip and a strong whiff of Virginia smoke. But now, his lips unclench, his pipe’s withdrawn; another minute, mouth’s agape; another and he is howling. Hands by the hundreds victory inciting: an artful player propels the ball, darts like a swallow the field’s full length, two men rush ...”

“... rival factions in the intelligence community: the ‘tree of smoke’ that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. I inhaled that smoke myself in 1969-70, when I was a cryptographer with a Top Secret clearance on a US navy ship that carried missiles armed with nuclear warheads – the existence of which the navy denied. I was ...”

“... foremost literary shrew’. She was a strong, funny critic. She lost patience with Virginia Woolf’s novels (‘too devastatingly vague’) on discovering that ‘she thought you need a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne.’ Henry Miller was ‘no sensualist. He might have made a mechanical engineer.’ Monogamy didn’t suit women ...”

“... predictable; they follow a script.’ The number-crunching core of her case is the work done by a Virginia-based non-profit called the Centre for Systemic Peace, which gives countries a ‘polity score’ on a 21-point scale ranging from minus 10 to plus 10. Any country that scores plus 6 or more is deemed democratic, minus 6 or less, autocratic. Countries in ...”

“... of the truth after an era of lies and fictions is itself a pleasure – the mind, as Dr Johnson indicated, delighting to rest on the stability of truth. Both writers appear to have a strong sense of the paradoxical – or perhaps it is merely that the paradoxes that appear in the investigation of men’s treatment of women demand recognition. Susan ...”

“... dictionary and its supplements, satirically underscored by the lament of Stephen’s daughter Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas that ‘it is much to be regretted that no lives of maids . . . are to be found’. In the 63 volumes published by 1901, only about 4 per cent of subjects are female, and even the most recent supplementary volume (on the first ...”

“... from superpower status. Underneath the dreadful images lie these enormous strategic choices. R.W. Johnson Durban The thousands who died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania were people of all races, faiths, classes, nationalities. We in Israel have mourned them; many of us have mourned for NYC as part of our real life, unlike Khartoum or ...”

“... last unlocked the puzzle and allowed me to read the full title: IOHNSON/DICKTYON/ARY. It is Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. A huge, very expensive, very prestigious publication. It’s fascinating to know that Williams owned this book – and is here associating himself intellectually with Samuel Johnson, the opponent of ...”

“... system to competition, companies from Ohio, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Colorado, Louisiana and Virginia spent £10 billion buying up British firms. As the Americans began to flood in, Labour took over from the Conservatives, and Gordon Brown slapped a windfall tax of £1.5 billion on the electricity firms as punishment for their excess profits. It was easy ...”

“... this stout and hearty assertion that they took from the anti-prophet Isaiah. The ur-Tory, Samuel Johnson, phrased it most prettily in the lines he added to Goldsmith’s poem, The Traveller:How small, of all that human hearts endure,That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!Still to ourselves in every place consignedOur own felicity we make or find.(Of ...”

“... in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in ...”

“... buildings and walkways at the base of the tower. He immediately sent a text message to Laura Johnson, the council’s director of housing, and to Holgate. Once he’d got dressed and gone outside he called Robert Black. The streets were full of people and blue lights were flashing everywhere. Black told him he was behind the police cordon on Whitchurch ...”