“... lady, formerly a great beauty. She gushed to T.H. about his novels at the tea-table. He shut her up by saying ‘I am not interested in my novels. I haven’t written one for more than thirty years.’ It is the living voice of that grumpy old man. H.G. Wells, whose ‘taste is not for delicate writing’, can occasionally irrupt with invincible common ...”

“... words of Israel Costa, a Jewish contemporary, ‘like a daughter to him … he did everything for her and fulfilled her every desire’. In 1864 ‘Aziza accompanied Shamama into exile, along with her husband, Moses, and their newborn son, Nissim. In Paris, they lived first with, then ...”

“... can be of no use to us here.’ ‘Sir,’ answered Godfrey, ‘I run no more hazards than Your Majesty.’ ‘Not so,’ said William. ‘I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without presumption commit my life to God’s keeping; but you …’At this instant, a cannonball from the ramparts laid Godfrey dead at the king’s feet. Macaulay goes on to ...”

“... in the autumn years of the Habsburg Empire, Robert Musil served His Imperial and Royal Majesty in one bloody continental convulsion and died halfway through the even worse convulsion that followed.’ A Musil piece in Inner Workings, which takes up some material from the earlier essay verbatim, starts: ‘Robert Musil was born in 1880 in Klagenfurt ...”

“... 13 water bailiffs over the Berwick side, but gave chase, captured the bailiff’s boat and sunk her … the men were disguised in their wives’ bedgowns and there is likely to be some difficulty in identification.’The story of fish and fishing is inevitably one of decline – decline of fishing stock, commercial fishing, fishing clubs, fishing ...”

“... thing. Even before Thatcher carried the vote of no confidence in Callaghan, she had commissioned her friend Nicholas Ridley to design a campaign of revenge on the mineworkers, and to ensure that all the arsenals and all the tactical designs were in place in advance. Nigel Lawson, who was later to cover himself with glory as Energy Secretary in this bannered ...”

“... the dominant figure in the other’s court, based at Antioch in Syria, and Maesa lived there with her. Soaemias and her son retired to Emesa where, at the age of eleven, the future Heliogabalus inherited his great-grandfather’s position as priest of Elagabal. He seems to have thrown himself into the role with ...”

“... message. ‘I am Richard II. Know ye not that?’ the ageing Queen Elizabeth demanded, mindful of her fallen favourite, the Earl of Essex, and his forlorn attempt to rally support for his claim to the throne by staging the tragedy of Richard’s fall ‘forty times in open streets and houses’. The play Essex performed was, in all ...”

“... Helen Castor begins The Eagle and the Hart, a double biography of Henry IV and Richard II, with her own definition of tyranny. The tragedy of the two kings is ‘chillingly resonant’, she writes, because it shows ‘what happens when a ruler demands loyalty to himself as an individual, rather than duty to the established constitution. When he seeks to ...”

“... to be treated as honorary men, and to play it cool. Baier did not behave as expected. She began her address – ‘A Naturalist View of Persons’ – by saying: ‘According to John Knox, in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, it is “repugnant to nature”, as well as “contumely to God, and the subversion of good ...”

“... years older than the poet, she received the poem just as she was setting off to New York to join her lover John Quinn – one of Yeats’s many ‘moments of superb tactlessness’. His ambition to be a mage as well as a poet was proclaimed very early, and it never faded. Magic is one of those serial and simultaneous careers that challenge the ...”

“... charming in character and began to influence the larger works, so that the Virgin enthroned with her child in 15th-century Italian altarpieces is seldom invested with the majesty she formerly possessed. Historians of the Renaissance will be glad to have his essay available and will be grateful for Peter Humfrey’s ...”

“... a caption. On page 127 we discover Pickwick’s old lady confronting the fat boy who wants to make her flesh creep. The old lady is drawn as Mrs Thatcher. The fat boy has the word ‘Voters’ emblazoned on his back. Why? What’s the point? Where’s the pith? Bernard Partridge could have done better in an old Punch on a good day. Low and Vicky could have ...”

“... and led by a woman beating a drum; ‘both sexes’ vied ‘to express their loyalty to his Majesty’. Four flags of St George flew from the abbey tower and, in the evening, ‘some of the witty wags of the town’ put on a mock trial, condemning and hanging effigies of John Bradshaw, the man who presided over the prosecution of Charles I, and Oliver ...”

“... Two years later, after the birth of their child, she left him because of his ill-treatment of her and his growing public reputation as a ‘sodomist’ and an incestuous adulterer. The scandal made him infamous almost as quickly as he’d become famous. He feared ‘assassination’, and was wary of going to the theatre for fear that the audience might ...”