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“... against those whose power is itself illegitimate, and who consider themselves above the law. Andrew Jack points out that Vladimir Putin belongs to a special, transitional generation. He was ‘born too late to share any of the Bolsheviks’ original ideals or struggles, but too soon to be fully inculcated with the culture of corruption and chaos ...”

“... Jack London has had difficulty emerging from the blur of his own heroic lies, his family’s whitewash, and the libels of his biographers. All accounts agree, however, that London’s was as mythic an American life as anything in Horatio Alger. Raised in grinding poverty, by the age of ten young Jack was up at three in the morning delivering newspapers to support his family ...”

“... you think you’re enlightened, go spend a weekend with your parents,’ Bob Walker said to Stein. Jack Warner was the type of man whom Stein’s father might have thought of as a business legend. Here’s Dennis Hopper: I was very young in 1955, when Warner Brothers did Rebel without a Cause – 18 or 19 years old. We’d started shooting in black and ...”

“... on: animal slaughter was the social cement of Pincher’s Britain. Harry Hyams, Charles Clore, Jack Profumo, Lord Dilhorne, George Weidenfeld, Maurice Oldfield, Victor Rothschild, Lord Porchester, Andrew Parker Bowles: ideally they should be highlighted in bold type, as was the way in the Hickey column. The author lets ...”

“... could hear was the giggles and gasps. On my little TV, where the picture was jumpy at first, was Jack Kerouac. He was sitting up at a white piano, and Steve Allen tinkled away at the keys. Kerouac is very clean, very neat, but he looks nervous. Allen is smug. He’s a polyester-clad uncle sitting at the piano. ‘You nervous?’ says ...”

“... training camp in Missouri that bears his name – the once famous general is a forgotten figure. Jack McCallum has taken it upon himself to correct that, producing the first biography of Wood in a generation. Although the result is unlikely to vault its subject back into the first rank of American notables, this very serviceable book deserves ...”

“... over Celtic Park, the famous trails of jet smoke, red, white and blue, the colours of the Union Jack. It later emerged that the Ministry of Defence had rejected a proposal from the games organisers that the smoke be simply blue and ...”

“... away from the lights, the hand-shaking of the primaries, and to seal the deal in a back room. (‘Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills,’ he said.) The difference between them had to do with atmosphere. Kennedy was the open-air politician, a fact that would aid both his victory and his assassination.Merkel was precise about the struggles ...”

“... with real life. Storey describes a rehearsal with John Gielgud (as Harry) and Ralph Richardson (as Jack) of Home, his play about England and everyday madness. The actors are navigating their way around two chairs and a table. Storey starts by showing the two actors before segueing into what’s happening offstage. Reading the memoir it’s difficult to tell ...”

“... next Prime Minister but three’. But the mind’s eye can be wrong – Johnson’s biographer, Andrew Gimson, records that Boris was a quiet boy who had hearing difficulties – and it may be that the reason we can readily conceive Johnson aged seven is that the public persona of Johnson aged 47 is so irrepressibly boys-will-be-boys. With Livingstone the ...”

“... the war for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS); a small group of retired generals and others led by Jack Keane, who, as army vice chief of staff, had enthusiastically supported the war, but since leaving active duty had been appalled by its mismanagement; and Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who as the second-ranking officer in Baghdad was in charge of the ...”

“... first-rate political and cultural journalism, and even this month, when the newish British lad mag Jack flags on its cover ‘A Speed Special Starring Fast Planes, Bikes and Women’, the much derided Playboy advertises a long piece by Gore Vidal on God and the state. Jack runs a piece about British wrestling in which even ...”

“... and, in retrospect, boring and pointless: all that matters is that the management and our editor, Andrew Neil, told us nothing of their true intentions. By contrast, the crisis itself was simple. Rupert Murdoch demanded a level of compulsory redundancies of his Sogat 82 and NGA employees that he knew they would not accept. The two unions took the bait and on ...”

“... will not easily endure the information that she once wrote: ‘I don’t care what it is, Uncle Jack, if you’ll only tell me what’s turned my father into a nigger-hater.’ Imagine waking up to learn that Hamlet killed his own father, that Pip had been scheming for money all along. Imagine discovering that Sherlock Holmes, in a previous version, was a ...”

“... actors can do with a soliloquy.The Glasgow pantomime was once the preserve of Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy, the comic duo Francie and Josie, who kept audiences roaring for years with their savage campery. They were pure variety theatre, and wouldn’t have been out of place at the Britannia Panopticon near the Trongate, said to be the world’s oldest ...”