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“... The Democratic and Republican National Party Conventions (opening on 16 July and 20 August) will culminate in the acceptance speeches of the two nominees for President. When the nominees step up to the microphones to address the cheering party faithful in the convention hall, and the nation on television and radio, they will leave behind them the committee wranglings over party platforms and the balloting of the state party delegates which brought them their nominations ...”

“... The class reunion – the gathering of a given year of graduates at their high school or college – is a Big American Event, and the biggest, most elaborate class reunion is the ‘Harvard 25th’, celebrating the quarter-century from each Harvard class’s year of graduation. When the first of a light snow of Harvard missives arrived a year ago in October, reminding me that the 25th-year reunion of my Harvard Class of 1961 would be the following June, my reactions were mixed ...”

“... Nowadays, as in the past, few are without an opinion, if not their own pet theory, on the subject. Rupert Wilkinson claims, not unreasonably, that an essential ingredient of the American character, and one which owes as much to the mythologising as to the reality of the American past, is ‘toughness’. This quality, or set of qualities and values, ...”

“... apparently – various dashing and extant English aristocrats, including Andrew Parker Bowles. Rupert Campbell-Black, wealthy landowner, sometime world champion showjumper, sometime Tory MP and sports minister, exuder of brio, glamour and charisma, is an all-round amoral charmer and shit, immune to scandal and opinion, and the envy of lesser men. Tony ...”

“... as the perspective it attempts to displace. The bias is more subtle, for unlike Orwell, Ellen Wilkinson and other chroniclers of interwar poverty, Pugh writes as a historian and not a crusader, but it is nevertheless marked. In attempting to correct an earlier generation’s imbalances, Pugh has written social history with the workers left out. A glance ...”

“... everything short of pre-paid order forms. The illuminati have been smuggled into the Index: John Wilkinson, Peter Riley, Drew Milne, Rod Mengham and (of course) J.H. Prynne himself. Prynne and Zappa? Certainly, why not? Ben Watson (the footnotes): ‘When I asked Jeremy Prynne what he thought of Captain Beefheart, he said he thought he sounded like Little ...”

“... Investigating the American character is a line of work extending back at least to de Tocqueville. Rupert Wilkinson’s book, The Pursuit of the American Character,* is one of its more useful contemporary products. The book aims to give a fresh perspective on the tensions between individualism, community and conformity. It focuses on ‘four historic ...”