“... is likely that some of them were part of the Shrovetide festivities around the wedding of Princess Elizabeth (the future ‘Winter Queen’) to the Elector Palatine on 14 February 1613. The majority of the plays are comedies or tragicomedies. Cardenio, judging from the Cervantes source and the Theobald adaptation, was a tragicomedy – a suitable ...”

“... makes it immaterial. In an enchanting piece in the People in 1950, a New Zealand journalist called Elizabeth Parsons quizzed ‘Britain’s three most eligible bachelors’ about what they might be looking for in a wife. The bachelors are Ivor Novello, Terence Rattigan and Norman Hartnell. Parsons catches Novello in his dressing room applying his make-up ...”

“... in the Countie of Lancaster (1613), illustrates the importance attached to unforced confessions: Elizabeth Device ‘made a very liberall and voluntarie Confession, as hereafter shall be given in evidence against her, upon her Arraignment and Triall’; and passing sentence, Justice Bromley said: ‘very few or none of you, but stand convicted upon your own ...”

“... Charge of the Light Brigade, Cecil was a frail woman with a tiny birdlike skull, looking more like Elizabeth I (in later life) than Edith Sitwell ever did (and minus her sheet metal earrings). Irish, she had a Firbankian wit and a lovely turn of phrase, ‘Do you know the Atlantic at all?’ she once asked me, and I put the line into Habeas Corpus and got a ...”

“... sets, finessed by fashionable architects, are like parodies of facilities promised for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. And nobody but the owners can get at them. What could be more empowering than to sit looking at an immaculate rectangle of water, a three-dimensional David Hockney which will never be disturbed by a thrashing alien presence? Neighbours ...”

“... cope. Karen was born in Beirut and came to the UK when she married a Lebanese man who lived in Bishop’s Stortford. The marriage broke up around 2008 and she took the boys back to Beirut, returning with them to London in 2014 and taking a private rental in Grenfell Tower. It wasn’t easy to pay the rent, given London prices. She could only work 16 hours ...”