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“... in French. The London puy shows no signs of having survived into Chaucer’s lifetime, but it may still have offered a model for the storytelling competition of The Canterbury Tales. Butterfield suggests too that these societies offer a context for the poetic exchanges between a number of late 14th-century French poets, perhaps extending as far as ...”

“... or Jerusalem, was often prescribed to those hoping to be rid of leprosy, cataract or epilepsy. Richard Esty’s medical manual of 1454 includes a long pilgrim’s travel guide advising on overnight stops, exchange rates and potential routes between England and Jerusalem. Long journeys in unfamiliar circumstances, away from domestic and economic ...”

“... politely inquired: ‘Do you wish to pass me on the left or on the right?’ The incident, which Richard Boston recounts in his biographical memoir of Lancaster, captures something essential about a man who, as a cartoonist and writer excelled in capturing types, human and architectural, yet himself remained hard to typify. Georgian (Town) Pillar to ...”

“... it as a decoy to distract attention from a highly embarrassing story, which was emerging slowly in May and June 2003, that the long-debated Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist.’ Four weeks after the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan’s Today story, Campbell had not asked for an apology for it specifically, had not referred it to the BBC complaints ...”

“... I write as I type, or I type as I write (do cats eat bats or do bats eat cats?). ‘Whatever they may do,’ the bibliographer Roger Stoddard has noted, ‘authors do not write books.’ Leah Price and Pamela Thurschwell take up the distinction and declare that their volume will focus ‘on the representation, self-representation and non-representation, in ...”

“... them: Frank would have had a hard time keeping the heir to Marple Hall in line. Oedipal gratitude may account for Isherwood’s later attachment to Berlin and young Germans of military age. With his father dead, his mother, Kathleen, became the focus of his youthful repudiations. His break for freedom was devastating for the family members he left ...”

“... and by 1953 had established a reputation as a biographer. Two volumes on the life of Richard Monckton-Milnes, the late Georgian politician and socialite, were followed by a life of Monckton-Milnes’s son, Lord Crewe. The latter was the quid pro quo for access to the archives and was, Pope-Hennessy admitted, ‘less than inspired’. Its ...”

“... the city’s deadly riots in 1965 and 1992; the formative years spent in southern California by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and the region’s postwar conservative movement, which greatly influenced their presidencies; and last year’s protests over policing and racism, which were among the largest in the US. The rest of the time, you might ...”

“... washed up at Preston in Sussex, Lady Shirley asked her steward to send them up to London ‘so we may drink it, which will end the dispute with the commissions of the customs’.When goods went missing it was always easy to blame the people who actually heaved them from the sea. Sir John Killigrew, who held the right to wrecks on the Lizard peninsula, faced ...”

“... In May 1804, at the age of 18, Benjamin Robert Haydon left his home in Plymouth and set off for London to become a great artist. His mother was distraught, his father furious, but there was no doubt in Haydon’s mind either of his vocation or of his genius. He could have worked in his father’s bookshop and inherited a secure, independent income but he didn’t want to ...”

“... investing something that might be called Life or Experience – it is a species of risk. Interest may or may not accrue; but art, James intimates, is a version of stocks and shares; the market fluctuates. Something is transformed – work is done on it – in the service of making interest, sustaining curiosity, keeping ...”

“... write con amore … was … no part of his character.’ Verse starved of parental love may well have problems attracting affection later. T.S. Eliot took a charitable interest in the case in 1921, but his contribution is rather reminiscent of Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre enjoining the Lowood girls to be glad of their burned breakfast: ‘We cannot ...”

“... kind of noise – the sound of scholars breaking lances. Some of the likely murmurs of complaint may prove a bit churlish. Of course we should have preferred a novel, and a polished performance rather than one written as a family entertainment, and an original Austen work rather than one initiated by Richardson. Yet, if it had to be an adaptation, no work by ...”

“... became in his flattery, the more Berenson resolved to hold his meaty embrace at bay. ‘He may turn out too animal, too overwhelmingly masculine, too Bohemian,’ he fretted: ‘he may expect me to drink and guzzle with him.’ Even at his most decorous and ingratiating, Hemingway gave off too much of the whiff of ...”

“... professional treatment. Whatever his feelings for his wife by this point – some commentators may have come to firmer conclusions than the evidence warrants – worry and guilt were substantial elements in the mix. And then there were the uncertainties arising from his irregular relations with the Muse. He had written practically no verse between mid-1915 ...”