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“... No one​ has a monopoly on violence in Iraq today. Competing Shia militias are as powerful as the army and police. They are seen as integral to the fight against Isis and officially sanctioned by the state, though they’re widely reported to commit war crimes, mostly against Sunnis. The Imam Ali Brigade, a Shia militia known for posing with severed heads and for its close ties to both the Iranian and Iraqi governments, also maintains a close relationship with the Baghdad Teaching Hospital ...”

“... Most​ wars today are proxy wars. Russia, Iran, the US and others rely on local forces to achieve military goals like annexing Crimea, or defeating Islamic State. Proxies, in turn, exploit foreign interests for their own purposes, and sometimes deal with competing, even warring, interests at the same time. What they never do, it seems, is call themselves proxies ...”

“... Nick McDonell’s first novel (written, in case you haven’t read a newspaper recently, when he was 17) is set on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and focuses on a group of teenagers from that neighbourhood. With a couple of exceptions, the characters in the novel are immensely privileged: they attend – or have attended – boarding schools; they live in luxurious apartments belonging to their (often absent) parents; and they are used to being looked after by maids ...”

“... The whole circus could be seen as a pale attempt to follow the transatlantic precedent set by Nick McDonell, the teenage author of Twelve (Atlantic, £9.99, reviewed in the LRB of 5 September 2002), whose godfather, Morgan Entrekin, is the owner of Atlantic books. Nepotism has been around for as long as there have been nephews (or sons), though the ...”