“... believe that, having conquered Russia, he would stop there. Notable, too, was the case of Sir Samuel Hoare, sent off by Churchill to be our man in Spain as part of a wider attempt to get rid of the more notorious appeasers, but in fact a continuing blight on the anti-Nazi cause: Liddell reports that not only was he ‘a serious obstacle’ to any British ...”

“... After a series of crushing parliamentary defeats she was forced out, and replaced by Boris Johnson, who promised to exit on the planned date of 31 October whether or not there was a deal with the EU: ‘no ifs, no buts’.In the end, despite all his bluster and disregard for constitutional forms – his prorogation of Parliament, intended to scupper ...”

“... they were overthrown in a military coup in 1980 which resulted in the emergence of Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe, whose ten-year rule began with the public executions of the ousted cabinet members in full view of the international press, thus confirming the Americo-Liberians’ prejudices against the tribal populations they had treated with the contempt ...”

“... but, as Eden noted in his diary, with ‘an utter lack of moral courage’. Then came Sir Samuel Hoare, who, having promised Eden on the eve of a trip to Paris that he wouldn’t commit Laval to anything because ‘it wouldn’t be fair on my way through to my holiday,’ then proceeded, in his eagerness to get on with his hols in Switzerland, to sign ...”

“... old-fashioned head of an established church than has Archbishop Runcie. Not only are his sermons Samuel Smiles homilies, attacking trade unions, preaching the gospel of work, advising the blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like the Jews, but he has strongly attacked the Anglican document ‘Faith in the City’ as being, in effect, a charter ...”

“... 1697. He was unusual among the men who made London culture in his lifetime in being a native – Johnson and Garrick, Smollett, Boswell and Samuel Richardson were all incomers. Uglow makes telling use of Hogarth’s progress across the capital, from Smithfield to Covent Garden, from the city to ‘the town’ and from ...”

“... from the start. Contemptuous adversaries like Fielding himself paid glowing tributes to Clarissa. Johnson, a devoted admirer, derided Richardson’s self-importance, remarking that he ‘died merely for want of change among his flatterers’: Johnson meant that his own praises ‘would have added two or three years to his ...”

“... On​ 14 April 1988, right at the end of the Iran-Iraq War, a US navy frigate, Samuel B. Roberts, hit a mine and was badly damaged. Ten of the crew were injured. The US blamed Iran – even though Iraq had been just as active in laying mines – and attacked the Iranian navy, sinking the frigate Sahand and the fast attack craft Joshan ...”

“... Johnson’s Imlac, urging that the poet neglect the ‘minuter discriminations’ of the tulip leaf in favour of ‘general properties’, has been unpopular for two hundred years, never more so than now, when it is believed that accumulated tiny detail – thinginess – vouches for a poem’ s authenticity. But Imlac also argues, apparently contradicting himself, that ‘to a poet nothing can be useless,’ that he ‘must know many languages and many sciences’ and through his command of botany, zoology, astronomy, politics, ethics and so on become a ‘legislator of mankind ...”

“... According to Boswell, Johnson was so hostile to gesticulation that ‘when another gentleman thought he was giving additional force to what he uttered, by expressive movements of his hands, Johnson fairly seized them and held them down.’ But in restraining someone else’s gestures, he himself gestured; he gave additional force to his opinion by expressive movements of his hands ...”

“... here delicately analysed, but also Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Fielding, Frances Burney and others. Dr Johnson remarked that the ‘call for books’ had greatly increased since Milton’s time. ‘To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to ...”

“... the odd glimpse of this old fiscal reactionary, and of some other Thirties dinosaurs like Sir Samuel Hoare. Of the latter Worsthorne reports ‘the personal antipathy everybody felt, including his wife, Lady Maude, to this cold and unattractive statesman’, but adds that at the age of five he himself could see the good-egg side of the man. He misses the ...”

“... Wilkes and James Boswell, but also by landowners, clerics and society hostesses – Hester Thrale, Samuel Johnson’s confidante, owned several jestbooks and comic miscellanies. In this context it becomes easier – though still not entirely easy – to understand the characteristic stance of the jestbooks towards class and gender. Some anecdotes – not ...”

“... am then never less alone than when alone.’ Or it might have been Byron, or Byron’s favourite, Samuel Rogers, both of whom put the solitude paradox into verse. It might even have been Cicero, quoting Scipio Africanus: nec minus solus quam cum solus esset. Hazlitt and Whitman did not much care who the ‘old fellow’ was who first coined the phrase: he had ...”