“... and divide into two the poet and his poems. This poet, however, believed in a poetry which ‘took the whole man’, so that it is possible to propose that his poetry may have ‘taken’ the calamity of his breakdowns. ‘My mind’s not right,’ Lowell says in ‘Skunk Hour’. And the doctors could not put it right. Lowell distrusted ...”

“... not Stalinist terror, was the chief threat Russia faced. Yet Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, remained captive to the fantasy of rolling back communism in Eastern Europe rather than containing it (as Kennan had been advocating). When US propaganda outlets encouraged Hungarian dissidents to rebel against their government, then failed to ...”

“... drinking and brawling less, and reading, smoking and gambling more. Yet this ‘levelling up’ took place in a context of widespread social conservatism. If people were better-fed, the British diet was still over-refined, over-sweet and intensely unimaginative (grapefruit, one memoir recalled, was thought ‘a Babylonian touch’). They may have been ...”

“... Petersburg. Among parvenus from other parts of Europe, few did better, at least for a time, than John Law, son of an Edinburgh banker, who gained an early reputation as a reckless gambler, but also as a brilliant thinker on economic matters. A companion from the gaming tables, the French regent Philippe d’Orléans, brought him to Paris in 1715 to reform ...”

“... and live according to the dynamics of the countryside rather than the urban ff furioso; she took a meditative turn against ‘the getting and spending [that] lay waste our powers’. In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (2011) by the American writer George Prochnik shows how ideas of silence slide from literal to figurative ...”

“... The Daughter of Time. Richard III has attracted passionate defenders ever since Horace Walpole took up the cause in the 18th century. It appealed to the stubborn contrarian in Tey, and to her scepticism of experts. ‘A man who is interested in what makes people tick doesn’t write history,’ Grant and his researcher agree in The Daughter of ...”

“... as Bert – that is, provincial working-class or just over the border into lower-middle. They took it for granted that when they grew up they would earn their own living, but instead of settling for domestic service or working in a shop they aimed at something higher; they mostly trained to be teachers. Their early education was sketchy (Jessie left ...”

“... was at war with internationally-dominant trends in ego psychology. His short analytic sessions took liberties with practices that others saw as sacred. And in relations with colleagues, Lacan disturbed the peace by insisting that traditional psychoanalytic societies undermined psychoanalytic truths. With the no confidence vote, Lacan resigned his ...”

“... Nasser may leave description unbeggared but Kyle nonetheless conveys its piquancy. This meeting took place in February 1955 at the British Embassy in Cairo, which Eden was visiting in his capacity as Churchill’s Foreign Secretary. Eden took the opportunity to exercise not only his legendary charm but also the Arabic for ...”

“... as warm as the paternity trail ever gets. It doesn’t help, as Baker also recorded, that Haywood took steps to have posthumous information about herself suppressed ‘from a Supposition of some improper Liberties being taken with her Character after Death by the Intermixture of Truth and Falshood with her History’. Only four of her letters survive, all of ...”

“... After​ reading five hundred pages of Gary Lutz, I opened Google Maps and took a long, hard look at the state where he was born: Pennsylvania, the ‘Keystone State’, although it’s shaped more like a ticket stub fished from a back pocket, is entirely recognisable in his descriptions. ‘I lived in a town that had sourceless light falling over it at all hours ...”

“... sported by ‘Gorgeous Gussie’ Moran in 1949, designed by Teddy Tinling, whose costumes often took up more column inches than the women’s performance on court. In the boardroom, men continued to call the shots. The first woman to sit on the executive committee of the All England Club was Virginia Wade in 1982.Many professional sports were barred to ...”

“... in 1911, Milosz was born a subject of the Czar. His father, an engineer of roads and bridges, took home and office with him on his travels throughout the vast Russian empire, and this mode of life continued until the end of the First World War. But this childhood instability was offset by a strong sense of regional belonging: for generations Milosz’s ...”

“... kid to a party at his home in the Holmby Hills. Dunne knew he was out of his element there, but he took it all in: Judy Garland and Sinatra singing ‘impromptu’ with a hired piano player. All the stars. ‘Before the night was over,’ he writes, ‘people jumped in the pool in their party clothes. I jumped in, too. I wanted to be a part of it. I thought to ...”

“... such assumptions. Trafalgar Square is a mid and late Victorian creation. The battle it celebrates took place in 1805, but Nelson’s column was not completed until 1843. Much of the adjacent imperial statuary dates from the 1850s and 1860s, and the supporting bronze lions by Landseer were added only in 1867. These are representations of navy, nation, empire ...”