“... but hard to handle: nostalgic autobiographies like Charlie Chaplin’s and novels like Arthur Morrison’s Tales of Mean Streets (1894) or Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto (1892). These and a multitude of other sources, especially school records, have been meticulously sifted by Davin. Associated from its conception with the History ...”

“... princes. Each had an elder brother who was Prince of Wales and expected to succeed. Had Prince Arthur and Prince Henry lived the Reformation and the Civil War would have followed different courses or might not, it is sometimes suggested, have taken place at all. In the case of Prince Henry, the son of James I who died in 1612 at the age of 18, romantic ...”

“... recent critics have sought to portray her as a primarily religious figure, the leader of a cult of young girls devoted to the goddess Aphrodite. Others, with a yet more extreme capacity for fantasy, have seen her as some kind of female professor or headmistress, instructing her young charges in poetry, in music, even perhaps ...”

“... Fifteen​ years ago I was asked by a young Palestinian student at a meeting in Jenin whether, as a British subject, I felt responsible for the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Perhaps it was the translator who introduced the idea of personal responsibility, when the young woman who put the question meant historical ...”

“... Everyone is in high spirits. Among those chattering girlishly as spring rolls and won ton arrive: Young but already world-famous deconstructionist literary critic, long involved in a lesbian relationship with an older professor at Yale. Somewhat mannish, chain-smoking medievalist of mysterious inclinations, with whom Famous ...”

“... nothing can be a real cool hand.’ He earns the respect of his fellow inmates (including a young Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton) in a boxing match against another prisoner, Dragline (George Kennedy), through his dogged willingness to offer up his body as a punchbag. It’s one of Newman’s best performances and was forced out of him by ...”

“... year in the sixth form at St Theresa’s. Confessing it now, after some weeks in the company of young men who had, it seemed, done it quite a lot, without any apparent remorse, I already felt unsure about contrition and uncertain in my firm purpose of amendment – the two preconditions of absolution. Having been away from Linda long enough for yearning and ...”

“... at least articulate. Lennon had turned away from verbal play into the Primal Scream therapy of Dr Arthur Janov – seen by Lennon’s public at best as a fashionable bolt-hole for the rich hysteric, and at worst as a profiteering alliance between phoney art and phoney medicine: Yoko and some quacks bleeding our John. It was an uncharitable attitude, but the ...”

“... of sex life uncovers the fact that in this unit of fifty and more people, most of them quite young, no one is known to be having an affair. Luxor, 14 January. Tea on the terrace of the Winter Palace Hotel, a brown stucco building no different from the Winter Gardens of many an English seaside town because built around the same time and nowadays as ...”

“... lasting significance than anything he achieved in power. Oswald Mosley, the most impressive of the Young Turks to contest MacDonald, lurched into even deeper disgrace, while Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury were simply not memorable. Clement Attlee, the leader for twenty years and the man who led Labour to the new ...”

“... entered a home for the insane at 19 and died there 60 years later, Charles went in for opium, Arthur for alcohol. Septimus would introduce himself to a stranger by rising from the hearthrug where he had been lying, extending a languid hand, and saying: ‘I am Septimus, the most morbid of the Tennysons.’ The daughters were noted for their strange ...”

“... his farmworkers would take when his farm was invaded by Zanla ‘war vets’ – the majority young unemployed men being paid on a per diem basis by Zanu-PF. ‘There were 26 of them but they told me that another 170 were on the way. They said that we were foreigners and would have to go. I said they could stay on the farm if that’s what they ...”

“... Californian born of Boers. He was also, we soon realised, gay. After a while he introduced a young friend, Arthur, who came around with him and learnt his trade, devotedly watching Villiers as he fixed our errant Windows, e-mail and printers. One day Villiers let us down even more badly than usual and I was getting ...”

“... Watched from a safe distance, Arthur Koestler’s life was like a Catherine-wheel breaking free from its stake. Leaping and spinning and scattering crowds, emitting fountains of alarming flares and sparks as it bounded in and out of public squares and unexpected back gardens, flinging dazzling light into dim minds, Koestler’s career left scorch marks and illuminations across the 20th century ...”

“... inside flap of the jacket, the publishers were giving away too many clues. The drawing showed the young man whom Mr Pennington describes in his Introduction as having the ‘slight irregularity of face that women find handsome, especially when matched with blond hair and blue eyes’. The photograph of Mr Pennington revealed a dark-bearded, middle-aged man ...”