Word: circus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Buckingham Palace, threading needles for their monarch at that very moment. Then, she notes, there is that noble equestrienne, Princess Anne. How would Anne answer if someone asked how old she was? Bette wonders. Without a word, she provides the answer: very slowly, like a trained horse at the circus, she taps out the number with her right foot...
...great tradition, Smiley's People begins with minor violence. An obsolete agent has been shot. His terminal message is broadcast to Smiley, onetime head of the Circus-the British Secret Service. But détente is now the order of the day, and the Circus is anxious to bury both the victim and his story. Ordinarily, the ultimate company man might agree. But behind homicide Smiley detects the ruthless spirit of Karla, his longtime adversary in Moscow. Publicly accepting the injunction of superiors, Smiley decides to do a little freelance investigation. On the scent from London to Germany...
...Smiley his dimension and Smiley 's People its distinction. Yet aficionados must view this work with mixed feelings. It is melancholy to realize that a weakly plotted book contains the secret agent's last bow. It is reassuring to know that even now John le Carré, Circus Master, is in Switzerland pondering the next big act for the center ring. - Stefan Kanfer
Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira provoked this Circus Maximus by taking a gamble--one most observers thought he would win easily. He dissolved Japan's parliament, the Diet, in September, and called for a new election less than a year after his surprise victory in the last party election. Nothing recent conservative gains in local elections, Ohira saw a chance to buttress his own power with a big victory for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which in recent years has lost the Diet majority it had maintained through the last three decades. Ohira stumped for a tax hike to combat...
...itself mired in the tropical hell of Vietnam--fighting a war with no strategy beyond slaughtering as many Viet Cong as possible, deploying awesomely lethal and destructive technology but without the will to wield it effectively. The war was run by "four star clowns fighting in a four star circus" as Colonel Kurz bitterly notes at the film...