“... Alongside the monuments Bray presents and describes are some startling texts. On 12 February 1834, Anne Lister recorded in her diary her plans to solemnise her union with Ann Walker: ‘She is to give me a ring & I her one in token of our union.’ Their relationship ‘would be as good as a marriage’, Ann had said. ‘Yes,’ said ...”

“... décor in crisp detail, praising a communal soldierly glory based on clear facts and shared power. Their flavour is quite at odds with the swirling mythological elements and elegantly allegorised scenes of exaltation mingled with cruelty that Rubens used during the same period to praise the glory of individual potentates all over Europe. Kunzle gives us ...”

“... us – he rounded on the bishops who came to plead that he would go with them to the coronation of Anne Boleyn: ‘Though your lordships have in the matter of the matrimony hitherto kept yourselves pure virgins, yet take good heed, my lords, that you keep your virginity still ... It lieth not in my power but that they may ...”

“... an old-style panty raid that gets out of hand. The dean and the president react with all the power of their offices and with the support of the national conscience and passion for rules. Henceforth the rules will be enforced: compulsory chapel attendance, strict parietal rules, including sexual segregation. ‘Human conduct can be regulated, and it will ...”

“... as well as Welsh and Scottish nationalism. Abroad, and despite the collapse of the ERM, the power of Brussels is increasing. Soon, all Queen Elizabeth II’s subjects will carry much the same kind of passport as their fellow Europeans; and that brave vestige of British self-consequence, ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and ...”

“... than writing high verse, going back three centuries to observe, and talk with, the colonial poet Anne Bradstreet, for whom, by contrast, the claims of marriage, motherhood and above all Christianity are much more important than those of poetry. Of the poem’s 57 stanzas (based on the stanza Yeats adopted from Abraham Cowley for ‘In Memory of Major Robert ...”

“... cut finger’. Death-by-anthrax concludes the action, much as it does in Jane Campion’s film The Power of the Dog, but there’s no saving grace.It was a June night, soft and nubile, with a marvellous moon; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into the air. She lay listening to it and thinking with sad pleasure of the time when Glastonbury was in ...”

“... Prospero with Miranda and Ferdinand – spoke above all of Shakespeare’s own return to his wife, Anne, and to his just married and just about to be married daughters, Susanna and Judith. As F.J. Furnivall put it in 1892, ‘at last, in his Stratford home again, peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita in their lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was ...”

“... Some writers discover their powers gradually. Others – Anne Carson, for example – spring from the head of Zeus. With three books in four years during the mid-1990s, the Canadian poet, classical scholar, essayist and translator became suddenly prominent in North America; she had found readers in Britain as well by 2001, when The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos won the T ...”

“... of Trevelyan’s historical writings over fifty years – Wycliffe, Garibaldi, the Stuarts, Queen Anne, Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, Grey of Falloden and above all the English Social History – not merely to recount the story of Trevelyan’s career, but to defend all aspects of his philosophy, style and historical method. In so doing, Cannadine plunges ...”

“... and Queen as the ‘National Trust Navy’. When we write about churches, mausolea, town halls or power stations, the only purchasers are from that small, incestuous public interested in architecture, but country houses manage to secure a much wider, even popular, audience. Mark Girouard’s Life in the English Country House has actually become a best-seller ...”

“... still spelt economic security, social prestige and political influence. Country houses were still power houses, where ministries might be made or unmade, reputations gained or lost, policies espoused or discarded, and electoral contests decided. But by the end of the 19th century, as land ceased to be equated automatically with security, ...”

“... just showing you the head’. Hood isn’t about fashion and aesthetics. It’s about identity, power and politics. Death’s ‘signature look’ In the first of several mind screws, Kinney explains that Death once went around hoodless. It wasn’t until the 16th century that he began to be represented with his head covered – or, in Kinney’s ...”

“... again. We go back through the Cipollaia tunnel and turn off up still more hairpins. Three days ago Anne and I turned back here, deterred by the notice warning us about Explosives, Landslides, Heavy Vehicles and Unauthorised Persons. We come out now onto a belvedere beset by dazzle, height and drop. This quarry is a mountain whose top they’ve been shearing ...”