“... to work on – especially because he can’t remember what Big Mal so cryptically said. Next comes Henry England, a.k.a. Hal Nine (aristocracy). Henry is ‘in a ridiculous situation’: he is King of England. More precisely, he is Henry IX. (We are in a parallel universe. And perhaps, in ...”

“... vivid, to be a person we could talk to and love for his ‘personal charm, his musical skills, his power of improvisation, his capacity to play a role’. This kind of biographical fiction might seem an extraordinary thing for a critic as intelligent as Greenblatt to have attempted. His earlier writing saw literature and ...”

“... pee, disgraces herself before Edward VII, incognito at the Victoria Palace. Now skip to 1915, when Henry Raine, the grandfather of Craig Raine (family tree), is writing from the trenches. His letter contains an inadequate attempt to console his wife on the death of their eight-year-old daughter Alice from ‘diptheoria’. He then masturbates, a favourite ...”

“... and too anachronistically ‘rational’ in its approach to institutions. When she writes that the power of these kings ‘depended on the respect they inspired by right and by tradition’, she is correct. But it is surely no accident that one member of the dynasty, the historian Nithard, wrote proudly of the respect that Charlemagne aroused by sheer ...”

“... his story as we knew the life of Nelson or St George. There was no such moving image for Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog (or Rottweiler) as there is not for Nelson’s Hardy or St George’s horse; the acts of the chief apostle are not celebrated. We know Huxley as a photograph or a cartoon: heavy-jawed and self-confident, or already fixed in ...”

“... year. Duffy’s account of the feast of Candlemas, and his explanation of the imaginative power of its ceremonies, is typical of the force and range of his arguments in this part of his book. The words ‘magical’ or ‘superstitious’ have been applied too often to late medieval religion, by the reformers themselves, and then by those historians ...”

“... history. Scholars wanting to understand More’s Utopia now study the political pressures of Henry VIII’s reign; those interested in the history of the 17th-century family now read Filmer’s Patriarcha. Outside history faculties, however, the fresh historical perspectives have encountered resistance, even hostility. ‘To many students of moral and ...”

“... for voters there in 2017: the submarines are designed, built and maintained by Rolls-Royce Marine Power Operations Ltd at a plant in Raynesway, south-east of the city centre. Today, there are fears that Rolls-Royce will move its operations after Britain leaves the EU. In December 2018, the company moved design approval for large aerospace engines to Berlin ...”

“... on the night in 1933 when his uncle Alexander Korda’s first great success, The Private Life of Henry VIII, opened, and that could have made Michael a good-luck charm in Alex’s eyes. But Michael is neither a film buff nor a historian of the movies. He is, instead, that vital figure in the picture business, a nephew, half-English, half-American, and in his ...”

“... previous history of womankind.’ Opposition came, strangely, from the liberal scientist Thomas Henry Huxley. In reply to a telegram from Herbert Spencer asking support for the burial, Huxley wrote:   It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly with the raking up of past histories, which had better be forgotten. With ...”

“... wide horizons and myopic international vision. And he needed an administration of almost limitless power and quite exceptional stupidity. Then he could be happy, indulging in the lethal, jugulating kind of journalism at which he excels. Of course he would have found some agreeable targets if he had stayed in Britain, but fewer and perhaps less worthy of his ...”

“... In Modern Times York promises to tell ‘What’s Really Happening’ to everyone – not just Henry and Caroline. He still assumes that what’s happening is best explained in terms of style, and still concerns himself only with things that can raise a laugh, or at least a chuckle. But York is now looking at all of modern life as a single system of ...”

“... date, absorbing not only the latest scholarship but concentrating on the extraordinary narrative power of the story of family vendetta and power politics which spans the two books of Samuel. A large part of its first half recounts the battle of wills between Saul and David. Saul is the original charismatic leader whose ...”

“... One can see the attraction of Henry Morton Stanley for the modern biographer. There is the intriguing rags-to-riches story of a Welsh bastard and orphan, whose childhood in the workhouse seemed to mark him out for a life of crime, and whose shifty adventures in early manhood gave little indication of the great explorer to come ...”

“... own series of ‘great alterations’ by appointing him lord chancellor. For those close to power in Tudor England, the ground underfoot was never secure.Much of the fascination of this tumultuous period consists in what we don’t, rather than what we do, know. There are large gaps in the documentary record, and what survives is often ...”