“... poem associated with Rochester, ‘Upon Nothing’. One is written in the hand of his steward, John Cary, the other in a scribal hand. The second has been meticulously corrected from the first by Lady Rochester, who does not however correct the ascription of three stanzas of the poem to ‘Dux Bucks’ and three more to ‘Fleetwood Shepherd’. Harold ...”

“... world. Recognising that he could have IP with world-changing possibilities, Hooke went to see the King and asked him for a patent – that’s how you could secure your rights to IP in Restoration England, though it was more customary to work through Crown officials. Hooke gave the King an early version of his watch and ...”

“... Here the glory of the English; the flower of past kings; the form of future kings; a merciful king; the peace of his peoples; Edward III, completing the jubilee of his reign; an unconquered leopard; victorious in battle like a Maccabee . . . he ruled mighty in arms; now in heaven let him be a king ...”

“... At bedtime, tears would gather in his blue-bloodshot eyes as he read his favourite poems to us. John Dowland’s ‘Weep you no more, sad fountains’ was a favourite. Another was Christina Rossetti’s ‘When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me’. Both injunctions not to cry made us cry too, as such injunctions do, the admonishment of the ...”

“... Joan Smyth par amours, and knowing her cuckoldy knave of a husband to be little better than a King Mark, carried her off behind him ... he may have done what a good knight should.’ In any case, Lewis claimed, ‘cuckoldy knaves’ apart, none of the charges was proved: ‘what should we think of Tristram himself if our knowledge of him were derived only ...”

“... of Europe, notably Britain, the American Revolution may still be unfinished. Looking back in 1818, John Adams asked a fundamental question: ‘But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people; a change in their religious ...”

“... the best essays in this book deals with the night scene in Henry V. On the eve of Agincourt, the King, disguised, moves among the common soldiers and is drawn into an argument about the war in which they are all engaged. It is a scene from which, through the centuries, commentators have flinched. The truth is that we are not given what we expect and desire ...”

“... an especially virulent form to counteract 45 years of female rule. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski quotes King James’s advice to his son to illustrate what she frequently calls the era’s ‘dominant ideology’: Ye are the head, [your Wife] your body; It is your office to command, and hers to obey; but yet with such a sweet harmonie as she should be as ready to ...”

“... guns is Ward Hill Lamon, who proves to be almost as formidable an adherent as Joab was to King David of Israel. There had been a plot to kill Lincoln at Baltimore: that is why the new President has ‘snuck in like some old chicken thief’ – to use the words of one of his enemies, the wretched Herold, a youth working in a chemist’s shop and ...”

“... laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Leading the protests was Martin Luther King. In the aftermath of the Montgomery bus boycott, King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, using black churches as the base for organising protests. During the 1955-65 period, what historians call the ...”

“... accounts of his life. Early Protestant accounts were more conflicted. In his ‘Book of Martyrs’ John Foxe was torn between describing More the humanist poet and More the lord chancellor who brought godly reformers to trial; in the end the persecutor won out. Saint or sinner, scholar or polemicist, philosopher or politician – no single vision of More has ...”

“... paying a price for it in the form of global warming, acid rain and so forth. Over a century ago, John Ruskin was arguing that Cartesian (‘modern’) thought had destroyed man’s reverence and wonder in the face of the external world, and that the death of God-in-nature would eventually bring the end of nature. Gore’s book is squarely in this ...”

“... One of this book’s chief virtues is candour. If John Cummins first saw Drake as the knightly figure sans peur et sans reproche who had been held up for admiration to so many generations, it must have grieved him to find how far upwards the feet of clay could reach. But he states the facts with a fine impartiality ...”

“... plotter was a scion of the royal house of Orange-Nassau and nephew and son-in-law to the British king, but he had none of the poise and magnificence that were supposed to go with a royal pedigree. William, Prince of Orange was a mousy, middle-aged sociophobe, famous for combining blatant adultery and sanctimonious piety, and loved by no one ...”

“... Does Britain need a written constitution? Of course it does, which is why, as Anthony King points out at the start of this readable and illuminating book, it has one already. Whatever its detractors might think, Britain is not some folkloric society governed according to immemorial custom on the nod and the wink of the people in the know ...”