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“... the assassination of the Empress Sisi and the suicide at Mayerling of Crown Prince Rudolf. But Edward Shawcross’s pacy, graphic account of the episode is careful to show that their empire began as a Mexican dream rather than a Habsburg folly. The exiled aristocrat José María Gutiérrez de Estrada traced his country’s woes back to the death of ...”

“... the hospitals of Central America, New York City and Cairo – told in gruesome detail by William Shawcross – gave grim satisfaction to the mullahs who had already ordered his assassination. Not long after his departure, I had sat at the feet of the outrageous Ayatollah Khalkhali, the hanging judge of Iran, as he listed those of the Shah’s family who had ...”

“... staff, and these four choose a fifth. The two nominated by Lonrho – on the advice of Lord Shawcross (of whom more later) – are Geoffrey Cox, a former editor and chief executive of Independent Television News, and Dame Rosemary Murray, a former Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and a director of the Midland Bank. The two nominated by the staff ...”

“... essay in defence of Kipling. Hitchens lines up the most formidable detractors (Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Conor Cruise O’Brien), quotes them fairly and at length, and then demolishes them. He even follows Orwell’s injunction that a writer should be particularly severe with the work of his friends (in this case, Said). After that he has the simple ...”

“... officer striated with pride, it came to seem, if reports are true, like a life sentence. William Shawcross, in his expertly genuflecting biography of the queen mother, shows us a Duke of Edinburgh just after his wedding, a young man in love writing to his mother-in-law of the new unity he has just achieved and hopes will bless the future. ‘Lilibet is the ...”

“... tributes that power has ever paid to reason’, and the British prosecutor, Sir Hartley Shawcross, to say without blushing: ‘There are those who would perhaps say that these wretched men should have been dealt with summarily without trial . . . But that was not the view of the British government.’ There was and is little doubt about the guilt ...”

“... Frank Johnson, restored to the back page of the Times after a disappointing sojourn abroad, and Edward Pearce of the Daily Telegraph, are representative of the sketch-writing-as-entertainment school. McKie is more thoughtful. The political team on the Guardian is powerful. Its front-runner for many years was Ian Aitken (by Tribune out of the Beaverbrook ...”

“... of the papers and to protect editorial independence. This is a bogus idea invented by Lord Shawcross. As every working journalist knows, the only effective way of providing a basic element of editorial independence is to ensure that the editor is himself independent of the proprietor – an idea unacceptable to proprietors, who naturally insist that at ...”