Search Results

“... that the throne was vacant, that constitutions at home and abroad were unsettled – and that the Prince Regent seemed a Lord of Misrule: they did not know when the Great Reform Bill would be passed, as prologue to the stable reign of Victoria. In times like these, Abstract Ideas have great power. David Bromwich does (with proper suspicion) include one or two ...”

“... Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where, unknown to him, his high-life associate, the film-maker Peter Whitehead, had been taken, after suffering a heart attack. It was one of those mornings of indulgent sunshine, filtered through gauze. Lilies and bell-shaped purple flowers. Twigs. A long pine table which gave Marks plenty of elbow room to roll his herbal ...”

“... government accounts by minor Saudi princes; bountiful proceeds raised in annual telethons led by Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. Richest of all were the annual transfers from the Saudi General Intelligence Department, or Istakhbarat, to the CIA’s Swiss bank accounts. From the moment agency money and weapons started to flow to the mujahidin in late ...”

“... Henderson reports, and he has ferreted out applications from more than ninety of them, including Prince Peter Kropotkin, Sergei Stepniak, Vladimir Burtsev and Vera Zasulich. Lenin was more difficult to track down than some, as he first applied under his London pseudonym of Dr Jacob Richter and later under his own name of Ulyanov, registered by the BM as ...”

“... in mixed taste, for a mixture of purposes – not the least tourism. It has a foreword by the Prince of Wales with photograph in naval uniform, carrying off a Domesday role as Duke of Cornwall; the frontispiece is a colour photograph of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a member of the Domesday Committee. By the time we reach p.ix we have been well admonished ...”

“... Anthony Nutting: ‘he had for too long been the Golden Boy of the Tory Party, the glamorous Crown Prince awaiting the summons to mount the throne in place of the ageing Emperor.’ Indeed, a survey of historians shows that Eden’s short premiership was enough to earn him the title of ‘worst prime minister of the 20th century’. One of the merits of ...”

“... record so far. 14 May. To Clarence House, to be entertained to drinks and a stand-up lunch by the Prince of Wales. Fellow guests included a number of Tory grandees. The fate of Speaker Martin was much discussed. A definite mood on the Tory side that he must go. I strolled back through the park with Kate Hoey. ‘A pity you are standing down,’ she ...”

“... expression of horror at its implications. What the doctor realises, from the racing pulse of Prince Antiochus who writhes upon the bed beside him, is that the cause of the youth’s mysterious illness must be love for his stepmother, the exquisitely beautiful Stratonice, who stands elsewhere in the room. The episode which Ingres never represented, and at ...”

“... to the historian. In the 19th century, in the age which, in their different ways, Freud and Peter Gay have made their own, sheer bulk of documents may to some extent compensate for this difficulty. In the 17th century, the problem of psychological interpretation is altogether more intractable. That 17th-century characters had psychologies, as much as ...”

“... there is no mother. The difference is that, in this variation, she will not leave home to marry a prince, for her father Antiochus ‘began to love her in a way unsuitable for a father ... Since he could not endure the wound in his breast, one day ... he rushed into his daughter’s room and ordered the servants to withdraw ... Spurred on by the frenzy of his ...”

“... in character (the switched sisters in the films Big Business, My 20th Century), class (The Prince and the Pauper, The Prisoner of Zenda), race (Puddn’head Wilson) or even species (Herakles and Iphikles, the immortal and mortal infant twins born of Zeus and Amphitryon). Lawrence Wright grounds what he calls ‘this widespread fantasy’ in other ...”

“... been looking in the suitcase, I’ve been consulting other sources: my father’s younger brother, Peter, now a robust 86; family photographs; stamp albums; public records; other people’s suitcases; books; barely legible notes despatched to me by my mother, who has a macular hole and a keen memory and styles herself ‘Research Department’ – the kind of ...”

“... Invincible is a member of the Task Force, clearly it would be intolerable to his contemporaries if Prince Andrew did not sail with his ship. Yet when General Menendez makes speeches telling the ‘English Princeling’ to ‘come and get us’ it strikes a chord round Latin America, where school-children’s history is all about the struggle for delivery from ...”

“... rising in Polish Ukraine and a devastating Swedish invasion known as the Deluge. To the east, Peter the Great was transforming old Muscovy into an expanding Russian empire, concluding that the Commonwealth was blocking its way into Europe. It was Peter, backed by the ambitious Prussian kings, who founded the policy of ...”

“... and again during Henry’s 56 years on the throne. At the same time, by deposing John and inviting Prince Louis of France, soon to be Louis VIII, to assume the English throne, they were insisting that the king’s rule was conditional on good behaviour and the Great Council had the right to depose an unjust monarch. This menacing proviso too lurked in the ...”