“... devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down. But if time is of the essence, what is the essence of time? ‘I know what time is,’ St Augustine said, ‘but if someone asks me, I cannot tell him.’ Physicists and philosophers have much the same ...”

“... the most powerful woman in Europe, a defiantly hands-on female ruler whose marriage to Ferdinand, king of the lesser Spanish kingdom of Aragon, created the germ of modern Spain and marked the arrival of a formidable new power in world politics. Their conquest of the Moorish emirate of Granada and their deployment of the Inquisition, forced conversion ...”

“... also in self-deception. Owners of social houses aspired to make them powerhouses, to entertain the King and members of the Cabinet. But insofar as high politics remained a country-house pursuit, it was still carried on in the homes of the Derbys, Devonshires and Salisburys, who despised ‘middle-class monsters’ – be they buildings or businessmen. The ...”

“... history. In her analysis of Ben Jonson’s later career she reveals how despite becoming one of King James’s most articulate propagandists, he nevertheless retained a margin of critical distance; and by the Caroline era, Jonson’s defence of his own, more populist conception of rural festivity was becoming virtually oppositional in the élitist cultural ...”

“... principles; he was sent home. On the way, his ship was detained in Southern Italy by Ferdinand, King of the Two Sicilies, then at war with France. For two years he was left to rot in Brindisi castle. In a neighbouring cell, the geologist Dolomieu, another prisoner of war, applied himself, using soot, a stick and the margins of Bibles, to the composition of ...”

“... between Sybille Bedford’s thirty-year-old life of Aldous and the awaited definitive biography by David Bradshaw. With the passing of time, Murray can tell us things prohibited to his predecessor by discretion and the libel laws. At the same time, like Murray’s other biographies, this one holds the central ground of its subject very ably and maintains a ...”

“... the kingdom of the Franks since Charlemagne’s father, Pippin III, deposed the last Merovingian king in 751. The lands the Capetian kings controlled would eventually expand far beyond the family territory of the Île-de-France, to embrace the principalities and smaller counties that would eventually become France. The publisher’s blurb for House of Lilies ...”

“... reading. Archer and Jockers are interested in the pumpkin plants – writers like Stephen King, John Grisham and Danielle Steel, perennial presences on the New York Times bestseller list – and what makes them sell so well. By looking only at textual features their machine has isolated the essence of the bestseller, Archer and Jockers believe, and ...”

“... as the royal motto still declares. But it was the son of Philip’s brother Charles who became king of France, reigning as Philip VI. Who had the better claim? If you accepted the notion of primogeniture, then Edward did, but if you believed that claims couldn’t descend through the maternal line, then the rightful ...”

“... know this is a big movie, no skimpy, fake-ass wannabe shit.’ Lee’s idea of a big movie is David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge over the River Kwai. He is also a great admirer of Oliver Stone’s JFK. Later we get a better look at Shorty and Malcolm in their immaculate zoot-suits, long coats, baggy pants tight at the ankles, broad-brimmed hats ...”

“... Spycatcher fame, a former MI5 officer whose evidence has to be treated cautiously, says that Cecil King, the Daily Mirror boss, ‘was a long-time agent of ours’. Perhaps. Or did Mr King, like other Fleet Street executives, simply exchange information over a long lunch or a clubland dinner? While the secret state was ...”

“... Modern academic historians​ want nothing to do with King Arthur. ‘There is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books,’ David Dumville wrote in 1977; and he was backed up by, for instance, J.N.L. Myres in 1986: ‘No figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time ...”

“... be exempt from prosecution before the ordinary courts, or might have the right to petition the king in person. Why did the revolutionaries of 1789 attempt to create a polity based on the elimination of difference? For decades, a growing number of others had been demanding reform of the inefficient administrative and tax system, and with the calling of the ...”

“... circumstances. Thus the ‘first edition’ (his term) of Deuteronomy, during the reign of King Josiah in the late seventh century BCE, was the Covenant edition, identifying itself frequently as sefer habrit, the Book of the Covenant, and stressing ancient Near Eastern treaty terms for Israel’s relationship with its God. The next recension was the ...”

“... sky; His be yon Juno of majestic size, With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes. As Kathryn King observes in the first full-length biography of Haywood for almost a hundred years, these lines are straight out of ‘the well-stocked cabinet of misogynistic satiric conventions’, and they needn’t depict anyone in particular. Edmund Curll, the literary ...”