“... Rice); and a few celebrated statements about the duties and limitations of democracy by John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Adams’s 1821 Independence Day address to the House of Representatives was delivered while he was secretary of state in the administration of James Monroe. A sceptic ...”

“... many dreamed of a distant saviour. Christians across Europe believed in the existence of Prester John, a Christian ruler thought to be based in East Africa, or perhaps the Indian Ocean. They thought that if he could be reached and convinced to launch a military intervention, it might just turn the tide against Ottoman expansion. There were also rumours of a ...”

“... to Whitehall, to the sound of ‘such shouting as the oldest man alive never heard the like’. John Evelyn went further: This day, his majesty, Charles II, came to London … with a triumph of above twenty thousand horse and foot, brandishing their swords, and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewn with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets ...”

“... Thomas’s death the family fractured. Frances ran away, abandoning the children to her parents, John and Alice Jennings. When she reappeared two months later it was to take over the lease on the Moorfields stables and transfer it to her new young husband, William Rawlings. Her parents watched as she drove their once prosperous business into the ...”

“... on them extensively; al-Jazeera devoted an hour to discussing the conference. The conclusions of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were confirmed. On the eve of Mearsheimer and Walt’s visit to Israel the Israel lobby stood at the centre of political life in the US and the world at large. Why do candidates for the American presidency believe that the ...”

“... definition of Post-Impressionism includes other painters who treat the viewer in this way – Gwen John, for example. Hammershøi, who looks back to Vermeer (he made his own version of a Vermeer letter-reader) and to Caspar David Friedrich’s woman at a window, painted in subdued greys, blacks, browns that owe something to Whistler. Gwen ...”

“... damage done to others was incidental, part of some larger story that wasn’t going to get told. John Wayne’s film The Green Berets (1968) told another story, but it didn’t tell that one. The cluster of new films about the Iraq War is different in both respects. The war is still going on – indeed has no visible end, in spite of what everyone wants and ...”

“... The evacuation of paintings to Wales, just before the outbreak of war. ‘Coventry Cathedral’ by John Piper (1940). ‘Pink and Green Sleepers’ by Henry Moore (1941). ‘Battle of Britain’ by Paul Nash (1941). ‘Saltwood Castle’ by Robin Ironside (c.1955). Sarah Churchill plate design by Duncan Grant (c.1932) from the ‘Famous Ladies’ dinner ...”

“... thread-makers and embroiderers Christiana of Enfield, Catherine of Lincoln, Maud of Canterbury, John Machon, Alyse Darcy, Alice Catour and Thomas Bell could be added those of Alexius and Andronicus Effomatus, Greek ‘workers of damask gold’ (drawn gold wire) in London; John of Cologne, a German immigrant working for ...”

“... was ‘governess to the last of the tsars’ and another the friend of ‘the Methodist preacher John Wellesley’ (I should like to have known who this man was, provided he wasn’t John Wesley). The father began an autobiography under the thoughtlessly chosen title Diary of a Nobody, and the mother was devotedly ...”

“... Eagar says he always hoped his pictures would be the illustrations to go with what he read in John Woodcock’s reports for the Times and what he heard in the radio commentary of John Arlott. On Midsummer’s Day in 1975, Clive Lloyd captained the West Indies team to victory at Lord’s in the first one-day world cup ...”

“... Thames and Hudson volume Photomontage, which exposed a new generation to the interwar art of John Heartfield, George Grosz and Hannah Höch. The earliest of Linder’s collages have a graphic simplicity borrowed from fashion illustration, sometimes with a twisted take on ageing glam rock: one of the mocked-up female faces looks like Brian Connolly, the ...”

“... In 1738 John Rocque, a Frenchman, began his survey of London. His map (engraved by John Pine) covers an area from Marylebone and Chelsea in the west to Stepney and Deptford in the east. It was finally published in 1747. Pasted together, its 24 sheets measure 13 x 6 ½ feet – that is how it is shown in the exhibition London 1753 at the British Museum until 23 November ...”

“... Mark Griffiths: his elaborately illustrated essay, ‘Face to Face with Shakespeare’, focused on John Gerard’s well-known Elizabethan manual of botany, The Herball or, General Historie of Plantes, and purported to demonstrate that one of the four seemingly allegoric figures on its ornamental title-page – a figure clad in a Roman costume and crowned with ...”

“... London house, 46 Lower Belgrave Street, the countess was violently assaulted and her husband, John Bingham, seventh earl of Lucan, disappeared, offer all things to all tastes. The story has the violent glamour of crime fiction with the additional thrill of reality, and the facts are just enough to make a narrative while leaving hugely tantalising areas of ...”