“... its ironic blending of high and low, its whispered implication that things might be different. May not the Linnin of a Tiburn slave, More honour then a mighty Monarke have? That though he dyed a Traytor most disloyall, His Shirt may be transform’d to Paper royall. And may not dirty ...”

“... Whatever may be the judgment of time on the intrinsic value of Renan’s contribution to the sum of knowledge, he can never lose his place among the few great names in the history of letters.’ This assessment from the 1901 edition of Chambers’s Encyclopedia, equally striking today for its confidence and its remoteness, summarises the conventional wisdom at the beginning of the 20th century ...”

“... its mast’ring power, I scarce can fathom, thou wilt never know;My lighter passions into rhythm may glow;This is forever voiceless. Could the flowerOpen its petall’d thought, and praise the dowerOf sunlight, or the fresh gift of the dew,The bounteous air that daily round it blew,Blessing unweariedly in sun and shower,Methinks would miss its ...”

“... the Irish are pleased to call the confluence of two little streams, pompously or poetically as you may please to decide, I think more has been made of it than either the waters or their meeting deserve.’ This is the English travel writer John Barrow writing of the Vale of Avoca in 1835. Like him, I find it hard to decide on the register of the phrase, so ...”

“... number of fratricidal horrors, of pointing a dreadful finger at the United States. Beware! You too may one day poke your cellphone through the curtains to film shaky clips of fires and explosions on the horizon of your suburb, it may be your feet crunching on the bloodied glass of a bombed café, it ...”

“... of great works this is surely true. But links between early and later writing by an artist may be allowed to illuminate both. There is one very early and imperfect play by Shakespeare which may throw surprising light on the absolutely achieved and mature Hamlet, not as a source, but as in itself powered by a ...”

“... be forced to do it in order to maintain anything like their current standards of living. Who, you may well ask, are the Americans to tell us how to pump gas or distribute welfare? Friedman does nothing to make himself more amiable; he is the kind of journalist who likes to tell you not only that he meets the top people, but that he parades his ego before ...”

“... left. Ray Liotta, looking young and spruce but tired, is at the wheel, his face well lit. Robert de Niro, in the passenger seat, is asleep. Joe Pesci, in the back seat, is nodding off. A thumping noise is heard, and Liotta says, ‘Jimmy.’ De Niro wakes up. Liotta continues: ‘Did I hear somethin’?’ Cut to a side view of the rear of the ...”

“... company of a Tory MP. The arriving train was heavily congested and the unaccustomed Tory – who may or may not have been Alan Clark – recoiled from the throng revealed by the opening doors, suggesting that they might do better to walk along the platform to the restaurant car. Jeffrey Archer ...”

“... the writing of A Small Boy. Thus in his immensely useful compilation, A Henry James Encyclopedia, Robert Gale maintains that William is ‘the hero of James’s autobiography, especially its earlier parts’. James had himself indicated as much when he first discussed a ‘family book’ with William’s heirs during the months, stretching to nearly a ...”

“... of Israel since the departure of Eisenhower. The recent Middle East peace conference in Madrid may therefore come to be seen as a watershed. With the Cold War over and the Gulf War won, President George Bush and James Baker, his Secretary of State, have adopted an attitude which the Israelis find so alarmingly even-handed that they have begun to suspect ...”

“... do not share and ‘which they have not sufficient imagination to realise’. Pat Barker shows how Robert Graves – arguing that even if you change your mind you shouldn’t break a contract already signed – succeeds in smothering Sassoon’s protest (he’d also chucked his MC in the Mersey) by pulling strings and getting him sent to Craiglockhart. What ...”

“... I: A Study in Power and Intellect (1974) and Carolly Erickson’s The First Elizabeth (1983) may not be works by ‘professional historians’, but that does not mean that they are without research or without value. What is, however, true is that MacCaffrey, the author of a remarkable trilogy beginning with The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime ...”

“... returned to the Soviet zone, and was taken in by Marianne’s mother. The wedding photograph that May shows a pretty girl in a dirndl, not noticeably pregnant, her curly blonde hair gathered at the back of her head, and a dark and sensitive young man, adrift in his suit. Siegfried had evidently been wrecked by the war; he moved from job to job and then, in ...”

“... is here revealed for the first time. But his relations with the Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, were mostly cordial, his term of office was generally deemed a success, and he and his wife returned to Britain in 1915 amidst near-universal feelings of appreciation and regret. By then the Duke was 66, and Queen Victoria’s only surviving ...”