“... paradigm-shift – would have aroused so little opposition. Some eighty years earlier the work of Young and Fresnel had undermined the belief, to which Newton gave authority, that light consisted of particles. By Planck’s time the alternative wave model was universally accepted, with formidable support from experiment and theory, but by about 1905 this ...”

“... work ethic imbued in him by his Orangeman father. He lost his father’s religious framework as a young man but read avidly in theology, philosophy and self-improving literature, searching for another set of values to shape his existence. He found one in the duty of work – for its own sake, but also in order to understand the underlying order of the world ...”

“... of change propagating outward from the electric detonator, through the heavy mass of amatol’. Francis Spufford has written about rockets before, in his non-fiction, engaging imaginatively with the Russian space race in Red Plenty and playing the V2 campaign at least partly for comedy in Backroom Boys, where he assessed the impact on morale of the V2 in ...”

“... was a technocrat, the nearest thing there has ever been in British politics to the bright young men the Grands Ecoles turn out to administer the French state corporations. As Wilson’s Minister of Technology between 1966 and 1970, he had stood for a Britain that could be at home in the modern world. Whenever, during his time in office, British Rail ...”

“... as the Attendant Spirit in a deliciously revealing ‘spangled sky-blue tunic’ and starring Francis Cornford (then a young fellow of Trinity) in the title role – must count as the most overrated and over-discussed student production of all time. The truth was that they were a hopelessly amateur crew, who looked ...”

“... German authors who are a little in love with the English, more particularly a certain kind of young Englishman of the upper classes, with his good temper and considerateness, his easy good manners and what Thomas Mann called his ‘boyhaft’ good looks. This affection, rarely reciprocated by English authors, goes back at least to the time of Herder and ...”

“... men involved, who are now dead (I am about to do so), but the man described in my book as the ‘young planter’ is still alive, and I will not name him. Within four hours of the explosions on 21 November five Irishmen – Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power and Johnny Walker – were arrested at Heysham in Lancashire as they got off a ...”

“... and writer for children, has been singled out for praise by critics as diverse as Philip Toynbee, Francis King, Angus Wilson and Andrew Sinclair. All feel that he lacks the large audience he deserves. Yet the curious reader, anxious to gain more information about this somewhat enigmatic writer, of undoubted power (and above all vision), may easily find ...”

“... untill his body be bloudye’. Obviously, physiognomy was then regarded with some scepticism. But Francis Bacon, the harbinger of modern science, was not among the doubters. He thought physiognomy had ‘a solide ground in nature’ so long as it was not ‘coupled with superstitious and fantasticall arts’ such as astrology and even sorcery, with which, as ...”

“... awkward and excessively serious man to talk easily and flirtatiously, if polysyllabically, with young women. In this period it was almost de rigueur to cast erotic affections as platonic romances, in which lovers with Greekish names relished each other’s virtue in a way that now looks suspiciously unerotic. Evelyn seems genuinely to have attempted to live ...”

“... man. He lacks the artistic quiddity of even such minor Victorian figures as Coventry Patmore or Francis Thompson. He is cousin to Anon, who produces something imperishable without the talent that builds up a body of work of characteristic excellence and individuality. So at least it would appear, although, as Martin indicates, the relations between ...”

“... plot to demoralise the nation.How and why are these ghosts being raised in countries where many young people don’t even remember Communism? Anti-Communists ask a simple question – ‘If capitalism is really so much better than socialism, why are our lives still miserable?’ – and offer an equally straightforward answer: it is because we don’t yet ...”

“... of Biscayne Bay. Before many pages have gone by he has used a carpenter’s level to reassure a young woman that the symmetry of her breasts has not been affected by their recent surgical enlargement, done violence to her boyfriend who got aggressive about this conversation, and speared his would-be assassin with the head of a stuffed marlin. A nice ...”

“... on Megalopolis, a film he first envisaged in the 1970s and filmed (mostly in Georgia) in 2022, Francis Ford Coppola recalled thinking about a famous definition offered by Jean-Luc Godard: a film is composed of a beginning, middle and end, although not necessarily in that order. With a little tweaking the phrase helps us to contemplate this sprawling new ...”

“... than a single well-house. At Braceborough, in Lincolnshire, a modest spring was befriended by Dr Francis Willis, who also ran a private madhouse. This – though the author does not say so – was surely the notorious Rev. Francis Willis, doctor and clergyman, who was summoned to the capital with a straitjacket and a trio ...”