President Obama’s flagship foreign policy of ‘leading from behind’ has had some surprising consequences. Not least among them is that France now appears to be leading the free world. During the current set of negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 countries, America, Russia, Britain, China and Germany seem eager to declare a breakthrough.
Mark Mason JFK’s Last Hundred Days by Thurston Clarke (Allen Lane, £20) brilliantly captures Kennedy’s entire life through the prism of his final months. Deliberately thrusting his crotch for an official portrait, musing about assassination (he even acts it out in a game of charades, covered in ketchup), folding his monogrammed handkerchiefs to hide the
One remarkable fact of recent years is that even as the veterans of the first world war have died and as those who served in the second world war have headed through their eighties and beyond, the memory of the 20th century’s two most devastating wars has continued to be honoured with thoughtfulness and devotion.
The BBC’s former political editor, John Cole, has died aged 85. As their political reporter during the Thatcher era, he covered many major stories concerning her, including the miners’ strike and the Brighton bombing. We have dug up from the archive a review, by John Campbell, of Cole’s memoir, ‘As it seemed to me’, from
‘Don’t even think about going to school in that skirt — you know you’re only allowed to wear it when you go down the pub.’
‘You know, I’m beginning to think the dog doesn’t like being locked up in here while we’re at work all day.’
Little Botox Peep and her ageing sheep
‘He just sits around all day creating initiatives to reduce obesity.’
‘We don’t know where he’s gone.’
‘O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?’
‘Not a chance this week — try again in a fortnight.’
‘You would tell me if you weren’t happy, wouldn’t you?’
‘You have the right to post one extremely abusive and threatening message on a social networking site of your own choice.’
