[S]carcely have the languescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down their tools […]

Arms control was always something between a sham and a sideshow. . . . [A]t the end of the day, a democratic Russia integrated into the West becomes no more a nuclear threat to us than Britain or France.

You have not forgotten our telephone conversation of yestreen, Jeeves?

Most poignantly of all, though, when I get fed up with working alone, I remember Victorian high school staffrooms of the sixties and seventies: the rigid hierarchy with its irritations, but also the chiacking, the squabbles, the timely advice from some old stager with a fag drooping off his lip.