“... and things that may not be done by the rule of law may be done by the rule of government.’ It took the rest of the 17th century – a civil war, the king’s execution, the implosion of the republic, the restoration of the monarchy and the parliamentary coup d’état we know as the Glorious Revolution – to establish that government enjoyed no such ...”

“... feral figures became our familiar louche aristocrats and sapphic seductresses, most notably in John William Polidori’s The Vampyre (the other story written during that famous summer on Lake Geneva in 1816), Keats’s ‘Lamia’, Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ and Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Groom calls Dracula a ‘brilliant culmination’ and ...”

“... The mutable nature of our relationship with the past is the underlying theme of Sentimental Murder, John Brewer’s compelling and surprising pursuit, across two and a half centuries, of the events of a single evening in 1779. What happened in Covent Garden on 7 April was simple enough and largely undisputed at the time or later ...”

“... an English (or even a British) one, and it has become less so with every generation. The essays by John MacKenzie and John Hattendorf in Cannadine’s collection address this subject, although clearly the ‘global’ Nelson could have filled a volume by himself. A substantial percentage of his crews were not from the ...”

“... above everything else occasions giving scope to the rapid cut and thrust of spoken controversy. John Lawlor, another pupil, has recorded that argument was the only form of conversation ever employed by Lewis in his presence. It must be a question whether such an eristic temperament made Lewis an ideal tutor, although he was assuredly an outstanding one. He ...”

“... on any film and store it. Storing would then become the main endeavour of a filmmaker.’When John Lennon was killed in 1980, Ono became the guardian of his work and set about retrieving items that had belonged to him. (Gillon Aitken wrote about bidding on behalf of Ono for Lennon’s tie in the LRB of 25 July 1991.) She saw at first-hand the growth of ...”

“... Press. Girodias is one of the major characters in Campbell’s story, and the major character of John de St Jorre’s preposterously indulgent narrative of what he calls ‘the erotic voyage of the Olympia Press’. Girodias was a publisher not only of the forbidden avant garde, but also of pornography. The Merlin boys got into the act, forming a kind of ...”

“... admired the poems greatly, and Jean Paul declared he never tired of reading them. Thus when he took on the editorship of the Rheinländische Hausfreund he was already known as a writer; and soon the almanac was being read, and items being reprinted from it, far outside Baden. Goethe came across an issue in 1810 which delighted him and made him eager for ...”

“... on its spindly undercarriage. It was quicker on the ground than other airliners, just as it took off and landed faster than them. In all its movements, Trubshaw and his colleagues and their French counterparts had learned to expect an element of hurtle, exhilarating to master. Events came at a Concorde pilot at a more adrenalised tempo. Trubshaw liked ...”

“... Sounds tracks such as ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘I’m Waiting for the Day’ and ‘Sloop John B’, although Wilson’s sound is more spectral, diffuse, a panorama rather than a wall. Spector not only remained a touchstone for Wilson, but became an obsession, a doppelgänger, a bogeyman. In 1967, Wilson became convinced Spector had somehow arranged ...”

“... housewife (with whom he had a lifelong ambivalent relationship). When Evans was four, his father took a job in Chicago and moved the family to Kenilworth, a new, affluent suburb which had been modelled on the English village. There, Evans seems to have enjoyed as idyllic a childhood as can reasonably be hoped for, protected and comfortable, even though the ...”

“... officers during the war, and now with Tito, to undermine the Bulgarian state. Frank’s reputation took a dive and his name was removed from memorials and museums. Slowly but surely, in the Khrushchev era and then under Brezhnev, the partisans were rehabilitated: there was a proliferation of Fatherland Front memoirs and public monuments. Dorothy accompanied ...”

“... tell you how awful it was. This period has now gone down in history as the great renaissance, with John Osborne, the Royal Court, but most of the time, night after night, you would go and see wretched actors, and there would always be something in the play like ‘God, is this never going to end?’ and Gallery Nell would seize her chance. One of the most ...”

“... military establishment and the new government in Washington, a town presided over by another John/Jack the lad. Profumo’s go-getting reputation and unstuffy demeanour made him attractive to the men around JFK, who liked that he didn’t seem like a typical Brit, never mind a typical Tory. He was extremely sociable, and well suited to the work ...”

“... border is my only complaint in life. It was a shock to hear him speak in court. Entwistle never took the witness stand, but two long taped conversations between him and an American police officer, recorded just after his return to Coleridge Road, were played to the jury. His accent was pure Worksop. He said ‘coom’ for ‘come’, ‘becoss’ for ...”