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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... laid in the mortar crudely,harsh lines stripe the entrance steps,and like a double-exposure the broad white hatof its pastor, his furiously serious face, drab suit,almost appear for us in the archway.That’s John Chilembwe:he seems to absorb all the light.But, you say from your future,he was shot on a hillsideafter his followers had removed the headfrom ...”

“... but they make few, if any, concessions to the inexpert reader. A good working knowledge of the broad outlines of Polish history is highly desirable. But the sheer scale of pre-war Polish Jewry will be evident to any reader of these books. The Jews of Poland, of whom there were three and a half million, represented the second largest Jewish community in the ...”

“... political ferment in European history, from the Twelve Articles of the German peasants in 1525 to William Blake. Yet Warr is emphatic on the need for a spiritual reading of what Sedley and Kaplan want to read materially: ‘These administrations [of law, gospel and spirit] are of a spiritual, not chronical, consideration, and are not distinguished by fleshly ...”

“... my attempts to turn myself into many different types of readers have resulted in a broad range of commentary.’ Østermark-Johansen is one of few scholars today who can command anything like the range of languages that was usual in Pater’s lifetime. She was educated in Denmark; the UK’s monoglot education will produce fewer and fewer ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”