Success in war underpins the claims to greatness of many presidents.

The sense of national catastrophe is inevitably heightened in a television age, when the whole country participates in it.

A first hint of the power of the electronic media to bring disaster directly into living rooms came with the radio broadcast of the explosion of the zeppelin "Hindenburg," in 1937 . . .

Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral.

Some of our best journalists take themselves even more seriously than the politicians they write about.

Aspects of life here civility, courtesy, coziness have always bound Britons to their country . . . They are part of the British myth, along with lovely countryside, dogs and horses, rose gardens, the Armada, the Battle of Britain.

Success in war underpins the claims to greatness of many presidents.