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“... but a Tory government nor by the sound of it ever wants to. At Birmingham I have a session with David Edgar’s playwrights’ class, then do another ‘Our Alan’ performance for a more general audience. 26 January. Run into Tristram Powell. Andrew Devonshire (sic) has done a diary for the Spectator mentioning the ...”

“... Somerset Maugham and William Dean Howells their dues, and resurrected the novels of Dawn Powell from neglect. Confronted with reams of words which speak so forthrightly for themselves, Kaplan resorts to academic robot-talk, wading into a minor comic escapade like Vidal’s novel Myron (the sequel to Myra Breckinridge) with lead boots: ‘Like Myra ...”

“... thinking: ‘I too could have been a contender!’ There are other challenges in Ring of Truth. David Ruddock’s wife, a pious Roman Catholic, feels challenged by the Pope’s visit to Britain and wonders if she ought to become a Bride of Christ. Dave’s young brother, a professional soldier, is called to fight in the Falklands, meeting the reluctant ...”

“... per cent. But a shift was already underway. In a memo to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971, Lewis Powell (whom Nixon would soon appoint to the Supreme Court) urged the defenders of capitalism to retake the field from their critics by establishing think tanks, media outlets and university professorships – all of which could help move ‘responsible ...”

“... or two feeble excuses for his hostility to the study of post-Chaucerian English at Oxford. Lord David Cecil’s ‘gentlemanly and rather old-fashioned scholarship’ is duly noted, but ‘this is not to disparage Lord David’s accomplishments, either as critic or biographer.’ Why not? Even Empson’s expulsion from ...”

“... with Brussels and the EU 27, reporting back directly not to his own secretary of state, David Davis, but to the prime minister? The magnitude of Brexit is daunting enough, but, within the realm of what was manageable, did the May government marshal its counsellors as effectively as it could have done? Cameron’s European advisers had deliberately ...”

“... Daisy Hildyard, Colin Kidd, James Meek, Ferdinand Mount, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Parry, David RuncimanNeal Ascherson‘On​ 17 June poor France fell. That day, as we trudged past Greenwich … a tug skipper yelled gaily across the water: “Now we know where we are! No more bloody allies!”’ The writer A.P. Herbert recorded that. And it was ...”

“... whatever fun might be had.The stage was set for what Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, claimed would be ‘a change from a feudal system of barons to a more Napoleonic system’. The staff at Number Ten used, notoriously, to be no larger than the staff of a mayor in a middle-sized German town. Over the last decades, it has swelled to a cast ...”

“... and their war on terror, consoled as they may be by a Democrat victory at the polls. Colin Powell wasn’t the only one who acted as a water-carrier for the administration, willingly or unknowingly. Bill Keller, once a columnist and now the editor of the New York Times, wrote a widely read article in favour of the war in February 2003, entitled ‘The ...”

“... man has revealed the hidden depths, the ugly unmastered history, of the country he claims to lead. David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Klan and a former Louisiana state representative, whose endorsement Trump could barely bring himself to disavow, said that Unite the Right was intended to ‘fulfil the promises of Donald Trump’. When Fields set off ...”

“... The bank was instrumental in the rise of the modern British state and its global reach, but as David Kynaston shows in his official history, it has always had an uncertain relationship with the state, mediating awkwardly between the private imperatives of finance and the public demands of politics. When the bank was founded in 1694, its business was to ...”

“... however improbably, in winning the trust of left-wing politicians. Who exploits who? When it’s David Lloyd George, he exploits them. But when it’s Harold Wilson?2 December 1997. Unable to attend Peter Hennessy’s public lecture on Blair’s version of prime-ministerial government, but he sends a copy. It confirms the impression that collective cabinet ...”

“... Benn has the same sentimental attitude to Parliament that we associate with Michael Foot and Enoch Powell. But ‘Parliamentary sovereignty’ is one of the polite fictions of modern Britain: it permits the executive, judiciary and bureaucracy to do whatever they wish – usually in secret – precisely in the manner that these diaries spend so much of their ...”

“... inevitable banality. Even so accomplished and versatile a performer on the sexual theme as Anthony Powell is capable of error in the same direction, as when the writer X. Trapnel (a superlative creation) reveals the secret horror of the diabolical Pamela Flitton’s sexuality. The Pamela enigma, and its funniness both louche and sinister, is at once collapsed ...”

“... had been frustrated by de Silva’s inability to compel witnesses to testify about the killing. David Cameron reneged on a government promise to set up an inquiry into Finucane’s murder. Stakeknife, who for 25 years was paid £80,000 a year by the British government, commanded the IRA’s internal security unit, known as the ‘nutting squad’, whose ...”