“... character – ‘[he] hides his lower jaw in a delicate gold filigree of almost masculine beard’ – and sought out writers who struck him more as ‘plain folks’. He found a kindred spirit in Edward Thomas, then a struggling prose writer, who considered him the ‘greatest friend’ of his life (not long before Thomas enlisted in 1915, he ...”

“... barn in a Norwegian saeter, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed beard’ – and make up a story to connect them. The reader won’t know that you ‘fixed upon the solution first, and then invented a problem to suit it’. This suggests, among other things, that in the world Buchan wrote in it was generally understood to be ...”

“... the challenges that beset a local philologist: ‘With his brown skin, bald pate, and professorial beard, [Jérôme] gives the fascist salute, bumps his head against the light, and sits down. The great scholar … has had a fair number of setbacks during his journey. He tells Griaule and me how he had to traverse a forest on all fours, as the shifta ...”

“... father, or at worst she’d had them only with one’s father; she was somehow virginal, just as Mary the mother of Jesus has to be a virgin, because it makes her so much cleaner. A lack of realism in regard to women is at the core of Peter Sutcliffe’s strange deeds. It is significant that Peter, the firstborn of six children (the second, a boy, died in ...”

“... in a similar idiom addressed to individuals, female and male, from Margaret Tudor and the Virgin Mary to the celebrated diplomat Bernard Stewart. The dextrous harmonising of gender roles in the London poem isn’t typical of his later work, but it is entirely fitting for a piece written within the context of marital negotiations, especially by a young and ...”

“... of a more general eccentricity: the strangled, oddly inflected voice or voices, the peculiar beard, the use of drink to lubricate all argument, to get something started. People who worked with him or saw a lot of him for other reasons had little difficulty in liking as well as respecting him. If he thought them, like Hobsbaum, professionally competent ...”

“... Gavin claims. Michael’s response was that the song and video – featuring his long-term beard, Kathy Jeung – were promoting monogamy, but ‘the problem was that nothing in the lyrics made the message clear.’Faith is a more muted and introverted album than its success, the controversies associated with it and the cockiness of its cover image ...”

“... 1981 to January 1987, was a Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues of the Virgin Mary filled his mansion, called ‘Maryknoll’, on Long Island. He attended mass daily and urged Christianity on anyone who asked his advice. Once settled as CIA director under Reagan, he began to funnel covert action funds through the Catholic Church to ...”

“... For the Duchess of Sutherland’s ball in 1923, Channon ‘went as a Bolshie with a red wig and beard. People were most caustic in their comments. Serge [Obolensky] and Bessborough were drunken waiters and upset soup and generally caused confusion before people realised who they were. The prince and his equerry, Fruity [Metcalfe], came as coolies and no one ...”

“... of Lowell’s war poems are driven as much by his fervid Catholic faith and devotion to the Virgin Mary as by his anti-war sentiments. The diction is clotted and dense; the tone is earnest and overwrought. ‘The Dead in Europe’ begins: After the planes unloaded, we fell down Buried together, unmarried men and women; Not crown of thorns, not iron, not ...”

“... regal dining hall graced by the likeness of Henry the Eighth – those tight-sheathed calves, that beard – all by the sumptuous Holbein limned; inside that singularly towering hall that choir lofts made appear so tall, it was perpetually murky despite the violet conflagration, that filtered through the colour panes. The naked benches stretched along the ...”

“... again to God, this time in despair. Suddenly the clouds part and there is a figure with a grey beard leaning down between the clouds: ‘OK. So you want to win the lottery. But please, meet me halfway: buy a ticket.’ 3. Man buys green bottle at car-boot sale. Rubs it. Out pops genie. Offers him one wish. Man asks to be the luckiest man in the world. The ...”

“... contains something we’ve seen before. Berlin was born in Juneau, Alaska, in 1936, to Ted and Mary Brown. Her father was a mining engineer, and her mother, as would be repeated over and over in the stories, was a Moynihan. The family name is significant. We are offered a picture of Lucia sucking worriedly at a bottle, not yet understanding that some days ...”

“... obliged to look up and squirm. Behind him are furled Greek and EU flags, a painting of the Virgin Mary and child and a painting of the adult Jesus got up in Byzantine bling. I remember how Hesketh mixed his talk of corruption with complaints about his sons being pampered by their Greek mother and grandmother, and wonder if there is something about Orthodox ...”

“... the other fellow … but none of them was sorry for himself.’ Olga Roderick, whose grey-streaked beard reached down to her waist, ‘was very grand and ritzy. You almost expected her to peer at you through a lorgnette.’ The actors suffered from ‘professional jealousy’, he noted, more than self-pity. ‘Not one of them had a good word to say for the ...”