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“... of the press. It is the freedom to perform a function on behalf of the polity. Nowadays, Justice Powell of our Supreme Court has said: ‘no individual can obtain for himself the information needed for the intelligent discharge of his political responsibilities ... By enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process, the press ...”

“... Syria. Washington has made it clear that it intends to deal with both regimes at once. When Colin Powell visited Bashar Assad after the conquest of Baghdad it was to name the price of Baathism’s survival in Syria: ending support for Hizbollah in Lebanon, closing the Damascus offices of Palestinian guerrilla organisations and deporting their leaders. He told ...”

“... to stand and fight. When his interviewer pointed out that it had been the government of Sir Anthony Eden, Weinberger insisted that, no, it had been the spineless Labourites all along. I have forgotten too much of the past to have any hope of repeating it, and think Santayana a windbag, but it still alarms me to see the United States embarking on a ...”

“... Bremer – or the viceroy, as Chandrasekaran calls him – and the US secretary of state, Colin Powell. When Greenstock suggested that one of Bremer’s edicts might have been too severe: ‘the viceroy snapped at him. The message was clear: Don’t contradict me.’ In 2006 Greenstock discussed his powerlessness with Blair’s biographer ...”

“... room for The Quiet Man and The Bridge on the River Kwai, three films by Nicolas Roeg and four by Powell and Pressburger, with A Matter of Life and Death sharing 13th place with Les Enfants du paradis and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp sharing 23rd place with Some Like It Hot and Taxi Driver. Part of the blame for the oddity of the Time Out poll can ...”

“... the very top. When Churchill bowed out – much later than anyone expected – it was obvious that Anthony Eden would succeed him and Eden was three years younger than Mr Macmillan. Moreover, few people would have put him even as high as being the runner-up to Eden. Mr Butler, who was younger than either of them, would have been tipped by most for the ...”

“... and related arts in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Lambert appears as the composer Hugh Moreland in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time (Lloyd gives details in one of many useful if cluttered appendices), and one sometimes feels that most of his friends could have popped up in the pages of Powell’s novel as ...”

“... it stands, would you believe it, for flawed character. It is with some relief that one turns to Anthony Glees’s Secrets of the Service. Glees is a professional historian and rightly attempts to place British intelligence operations in the context of the twists and turns of British foreign policy. In so far as it is possible, Glees has been meticulous in ...”

“... simple-minded or single-minded. Narrative can be capacious as well as directional. Burrow and Anthony Grafton are as capacious as can be. Their question is not so much ‘how did it come to this?’ – in Grafton’s case, to a more critical historicism in the 17th and 18th centuries; in Burrow’s, to professional history-writing in the 20th – as ...”

“... to Harold Macmillan. In July 1963, in a brilliant article in the Spectator (which I then owned), Anthony West, after depicting Senator McCarthy’s activities in America and exposing the potentialities for nonsense (still with us) in the concept of security risks, showed that it was ‘this game’ that Harold Wilson, George Wigg (‘that industrious garbage ...”

“... My father rode in many chases alongside him, both of them often on horses trained by Captain Bay Powell. He admired Derek’s dash rather than his elegance, in and out of the saddle. For us children dragged along in his wake, Derek was not so easy. Like Rose and his transient stepchildren, I found him an unnerving presence. He would set out to be genial and ...”

“... the idea that I might not, ‘we’re going to have 600,000 immigrants a year from now on.’ Ken Powell was sitting with us, listening. He was mayor of Tewkesbury at the time of the floods, though not the only one. The town has two mayors: one representing the borough of Tewkesbury, which covers a number of other communities, has a multi-million pound budget ...”

“... was a natural actor. Carole Lombard, who had worked with Fredric March, Charles Laughton, William Powell and John Barrymore, thought him more remarkable than any of them. On screen, his name appeared as James Stewart, and he worked hard at every detail. He was a canny businessman. Before the Second World War, he invested in a small airline. Soon after the ...”

“... Anthony Holden’s is the 16th book about Laurence Olivier, and his foreword tells of two more biographers, John Cottrell and Garry O’Connor, too intent on their own deadlines to discuss their common quarry with him. All this activity may puzzle the lay person. Holden’s final pages report Olivier alive, as well as can be expected at 81, residing tranquilly in the Sussex countryside, still swimming occasional lengths of his pool in the altogether and attending the first nights of the three children who have followed Joan Plowright and himself into the theatre ...”

“... relatively short volume is not so much a biography of Crossman – that is to be provided by Anthony Howard – as a portrait of someone he clearly loved. But it is a long way from being the misty-eyed picture of a faultless hero. Black Tam o’the Binns has a reputation to maintain as a man who puts truth and objectivity before mere ...”