“... indeed with a gratifying coarseness. The last quality, accompanied by a tendency to make rather broad (and sometimes rather good) jokes, distances Barrell’s prose from that of his subject, for whom he occasionally evinces a touch of humorous contempt. Indeed one general complaint about the book might be that Barrell hardly bothers to persuade the reader ...”

“... The story goes that, on the day when William Empson moved into Magdalene College, Cambridge, to take up a fellowship, his suitcases (as was the custom in those days) were unpacked by one of the college servants. The gyp was so shocked by the contents of Empson’s bags that he decided to report him to the college authorities ...”

“... William Lilly was the first to produce a major textbook of astrology in the English language, at a time when the truth of astrology was almost universally recognised. At their peak in the 1650s his almanacs sold up to 30,000 copies a year. From them he may only have netted a modest £70 a year (enough for a gentleman to live on), but they served to advertise his astrological practice, from which we have the surviving records of many thousands of consultations ...”

“... Dutch Wars was uneven, and political and religious divisions among its officers and men enabled William III and the Dutch fleet to stage a successful invasion in 1688 and disrupt the country yet again. Domestic strife and European enemies also restricted the navy’s enterprise in non-European waters before 1750, and so too did its own flaws. An expensive ...”

“... form of religious dogma (although I do remember with some affection what it was like to do so).’ William Cowper wrote: ‘Blind unbelief is sure to err.’ But so is blind belief. Standing where he does, MacCulloch is aware of the importance of understanding his subject for those who are not religious: ‘The decay of actual religious practice in Europe ...”

“... half-hidden by the computer screens at which they all sit. It could be a stock exchange, or even William Hill’s. Bigger screens let the spectators follow the proceedings and, via a landline, do the same for the media in their own separate room where, at the touch of a button, they can get interesting passages printed out from the simultaneous transcript ...”

“... without meanness, and if mentally thick, nonetheless a durable and somehow a reassuring presence.William Blake’s​ parents, like Gillray’s, belonged to the Moravian Church, and their early careers ran parallel in other ways. Blake’s first book, Poetical Sketches, came out in 1783, the same year as Gillray’s first major political cartoon, Neither War ...”

“... an elite interested in literature, philosophy and current events. They survived by appealing to a broad group of readers, and early little magazines were formed in reaction to the complacent miscellany of the quarterlies, which had come to be regarded as stale and bourgeois: in 1936 Clifford Bax sneered that ‘quarterly magazines of art and literature ...”

“... dazzling, and she developed a crush on her of almost schoolgirl intensity. In November 1688, when William of Orange landed in England to oust Anne’s father, King James II, the Marlboroughs seized their chance. Sarah helped the Princess to escape from Whitehall and brought her safely to William’s camp, while her husband ...”

“... the great (Diaghilev, the Sitwells), one is often keener to learn of the luck his rival and friend William Walton was having. Walton’s history lurks in the shadows of the Lambertian narrative, and his more succulent achievement stimulates the greater curiosity. As for George Lambert’s overall failure, Motion himself supplies the required epitaph: ‘At a ...”

“... all the young queen had more in common with her unpopular and self-indulgent uncles George IV and William IV than the fresh-faced appearance and the famous promise to ‘be good’ suggested. Courtiers and Victoria herself recorded tearful scenes and door slamming on her part and implacable calm, or the appearance of it, on Albert’s. Once he locked himself ...”

“... established Church,’ we are reminded, ‘Malthus was as much the successor to Abraham Tucker and William Palcy as to Adam Smith, and as much the contemporary of someone like Bishop Sumner, who did so much to make his doctrines acceptable in Anglican circles, as of his friend Ricardo.’ Macaulay, on the other hand, is to be visualised, as he so often ...”

“... for his religious beliefs in the reign of Charles I would have been his favoured archbishop, William Laud? What justice did the John Hothams, father and son, get for defying their king when he attempted to claim his magazine of arms and munitions at Hull? They were subsequently executed by order of Parliament. How could the oracles of the common law ...”

“... be reached from the main Eastbourne-Lewes road by an unmade track which, as it approached the broad slope of the beacon, abruptly divided, the right-hand fork leading to Charleston and the left to Tilton and the farm Keynes rented from the Gage Estate. The impression was one of seclusion rather than remoteness. There was nothing to surprise walkers in ...”

“... Huntington was more of a taxonomer, acquiring hundreds of thousands of objects to create ‘a broad outline without duplication’ of Spanish and Hispanic art and culture. He wanted, as he put it, to ‘capture the soul of Spain in a museum’ and, in May 1904, he founded the society as a free public library, museum and educational institution. The RA ...”