“... A historian​ ought to know better, I suppose. But for the last decade – ever since I passed a long queue of anxious depositors outside a branch of Northern Rock in September 2007 – the idea that we might be living through our own version of the 1930s has proved irresistible. The run on Northern Rock augured a financial collapse on the scale of 1929, and has been followed by the re-emergence in the West of protectionist posturing, authoritarian politics, demagoguery and nativism, as well as the bullying land-grabs in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine ...”

“... the world centre for the study of the life and work of Bertrand Russell is at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Shortly before he died Russell sold his vast collection of manuscripts and personal papers to McMaster for a huge sum of money in order to finance the various projects of ...”

“... as a partly cliff-hanging, partly tree-nestled village on a North Wales coastal estuary, adding to it building by building across some fifty years. Always astonishing, some think beautiful, it enjoyed its greatest publicity as the setting for the cult TV series, The Prisoner. But this kind of showy reputation is not ...”

“... The Thing about Joe Sullivan, probably the most likeable collection by a not always likeable poet, John Ash wrote: ‘In a better world, he would be as widely known and highly praised as Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.’ This would be a very strange world, and not necessarily a better one. Fisher has never aspired to the sort ...”

“... and the inviolability of the home were exchanged between the Minister of State and the Prefect, to whom M. de Sérisy pointed out that the major interests of the country sometimes required secret illegalities, crime beginning only when State means were applied to private interests.If ever a man feels the sweetness, the ...”

“... under the floodlights, a penetrating radar giving the bones a voluptuous rebirth.’ There aren’t many skeletons left in Hardwick’s closet. Since 1973, when Robert Lowell published The Dolphin, a series of sonnets based on Hardwick’s letters to him during the breakdown of their marriage, the story of her life has been ...”

“... an ordeal not lightly undertaken. Storms and seasickness were inevitable – passengers often had to be carried ashore. Rival nations’ warships patrolled the main sailing routes, adding the danger of capture to the perils of the sea. But for most travellers, the worst part was the tedium. Despite this, many American and ...”

“... Woe​ to royal daughters over the centuries: from the moment of their birth, they were seen as assets to be traded on the international marriage market for the benefit of their families. The bidding for such unions began early, often when the girls were still infants; there would likely be a series of explorations, more or less serious, before one intricate set of negotiations made it to completion ...”

“... Clay Frick bequeathed his Beaux-Arts limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, along with its contents, to the city of New York. The Frick opened to the public as a museum in 1935, sixteen years after Frick’s death at the age of 69, and four years after that of his wife, Adelaide, at the age of 71. Although the museum’s ...”

“... are of interest, but what is the point of unrolling them alphabetically as something purporting to be a dictionary? Abbott opens, and Zangwill closes, yet the book is not a work of reference. It is an anthology. A lazy piece of work, or of relaxation, and not just because its compiler has declined the effort of an imaginative ordering and has instead fallen ...”

“... Latin and Greek by gaslight and riding a goat cart in Central Park’ before going off to Harvard, where his classmates included John Reed, T.S. Eliot and Conrad Aiken. From birth to death, Fortune – in the form of knowing nearly everyone ...”

“... he disdained. In the words of David Grann, whose compelling new book, The Lost City of Z, tries to make sense of the man and his last mission, Fawcett ‘ventured into blank spots on the map with little more than a machete, a compass and an almost divine sense of purpose’. He was an imposing figure, tall, lean tending ...”

“... vote. As on numerous other matters, the constitution is frustratingly opaque when it comes to details. Most people think they can recognise treason and bribery when they see them, but what constitutes a high crime or a misdemeanour? In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton described impeachment as a political ...”

“... but equally celebrated portrayal of the Baronne de Rothschild, a woman Heinrich Heine compared to an angel. It is at once lush and restrained. Betty de Rothschild’s glorious full pink skirt is set against a rich brown background; she wears pearls and a large ruby, but her pose is informal, her eyes thoughtful. Such paintings illuminate a moment when Jews ...”

“... Hope Atherton was the chaplain accompanying Captain William Turner’s militia on their march to an Algonquian encampment near Deerfield, Massachusetts in the Connecticut River Valley. There they ambushed the sleeping tribe, slaughtered some of them and drove others into the river, which swept them over the waterfall – now known as Turners Falls ...”