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“... issued with explosive-packed sky rockets to be let off in case of any disturbance. At 5 a.m. the bell of St George’s Church, Southwark, began tolling and spectators started to stream silently towards it through the dark and freezing streets. By the time it stopped an hour later, every vantage point around the jail was packed solid. The impending execution ...”

“... for determining specific gravities; all manner of timekeepers; a universal joint; a diving bell; a bullet-proof vest; a ‘sailing chariot’; a velocipede; improvements to the camera obscura, oil lamps and musical instruments, and in techniques for staining marble, printing maps and milling apples; and a formal method for producing an endless supply ...”

“... moiling was still ahead of him.) Fifty years later, we are all, in Berryman’s sardonic words, ‘Henry House’, all ‘the steadiest man on the block’, and the stronger the reaction against the confessional poets, the more prominence accrues to Bishop’s self-exemption, the more stark and heroic and solitary her small output seems, the more remarkable ...”

“... muliebre’) was an element in a nun’s attire – because he had read a satire on Sir Henry Vane which said ‘They talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They’d send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat’ – is something of an old chestnut, but there are some other less well-known juicy bits here. The late 18th-century use of the word ...”

“... products but also controlled the diffusion of knowledge about new technologies: the attendees at Bell Labs’ first industry-wide demonstration of the transistor in 1951 were vetted by the Department of Defence. Transistors were particularly important in the following decade because they were integrated into long-range missile systems.Space and nuclear ...”

“... a beat. I think it must be Thursday, she says, because he has to go into town every day.My father Henry is tall and thin, with a tweed sports jacket. His black hair is slicked back with a patent solution. He wears spectacles and looks very intelligent, in my opinion. He brings home the Manchester Evening News.He brings home the smell on his coat of autumn ...”

“... most staunch supporters in the 1930s. Few were more unwavering in their support than his brother Henry, yet even he complained the previous year that ‘sometimes you remind me of a gentleman in full evening dress and white gloves attempting to put something right with the kitchen plumbing without soiling his attire.’ It comes as no surprise when the great ...”

“... in its detail: undergraduates on night fire-watching duty taking turns to stay awake in the bell tower of Christ Church, the smell of blackout curtains, the ominous poetry of the blackout itself, the eight-second interval between trucks in a military convoy, with a press of bicycles behind the last one. This section is written in the first ...”

“... had to be warned off, kept at bay. I desired the hitherto unattainable – to be left alone: what Henry James once described as ‘uncontested possession of the long, sweet, stupid day’: that peace to which no living creature has a natural right. Yes, for a time I was decidedly neurotic on the subject of my friends. I even imagined a kinship with Dorothy ...”

“... came into conflict of a thoroughly traditional and predictable kind. This conflict sharpened when Henry V of England, who had revived dynastic claims of his own to the French Crown, offered to fight alongside Burgundy. The effects were duly felt in frontier regions – raiding and thieving in and around Domrémy became frequent. In 1423, the husband of ...”

“... key to the appearance of a writer’s work in another language; it may make their fortune: Anthea Bell (Englishing Sebald) and Ann Goldstein (voicing Elena Ferrante) propelled the authors to cult status beyond their own shores. Like a shrub moved to a sunnier position, writers may thrive when transplanted. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Human Acts have won ...”

“... out a scrupulous autopsy of the mechanical monk. Carved from poplar or beech, it has a hollow, bell-shaped body that contains its clockwork. Three wheels on the underside provide propulsion and steering while a pair of sandalled feet on the front paddle at the air to give the illusion of walking. The arms are articulated at the shoulder and elbow; the head ...”

“... most primitive fears of the white racist imagination were not held only by defenders of slavery. Henry A. Wise, a Southern member of Congress and a future Confederate general, called John Quincy Adams ‘the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed’. Adams would have subscribed to the view that ‘all men are created ...”

“... two coasts at once. The summit of Goat Fell on the Isle of Arran can be seen in the west, and the Bell Rock, smack in the Firth of Forth, is clear on the other side, down to the east. Walking up to the burial mound, Karl and I were approached by a herd of cattle. ‘Good, good,’ said Seamus, coming up and flicking them away. ‘A square-go in ...”

“... ever. In the second half of her life, following her marriage in 1912 to the newspaper editor Henry de Jouvenel, the birth of her daughter, Bel-Gazou, and the beginning of her gradual transformation from scandalous cocotte into France’s most celebrated and respected woman writer, Colette moved on to a complicated series of Younger Women and Younger ...”