“... and went, rightly, for astronomical fixes wherever possible. But even here error crept in. As John Noble Wilford reminds us, ‘even as late as 1740, it was estimated that not more than 116 places on earth had been correctly located by astronomical observation.’ When we also recall that Ptolemy had no method of accurate time-keeping, we can only marvel ...”

“... trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room there were oval engravings of the months – ladies haymaking in short waists, and large hats tied under the chin, for June – smooth-legged ...”

“... economic and social policies which were explosively incompatible and which eventually did for John Major’s Government, and a reckless ‘re-engineering’ of the country’s social structure which ultimately went disastrously wrong for the Tories. She brought into being a middle class which, it turns out, has no overriding loyalty to the Conservative ...”

“... Williams was playing with Fenella Fielding in the revue Pieces of Eight (largely written by Peter Cook) at the Apollo Theatre, and his diary entry for the 27th reads: ‘The show in evening went well, till Madam decided to ad lib one line before the tag in “Spies”. Of course it threw me completely. This is the last straw. I’ve reported it to the ...”

“... most Parisians, but Ayer lived in Guy de Rothschild’s house in Paris, supported by a butler, a cook and a good cellar. When this arduous postwar service was over he returned to Oxford, at a time when philosophy in Oxford had yet to become Oxford philosophy and, in his view (Ryle, perhaps, apart, and H.H. Price), needed a good shaking. Real philosophy was ...”

“... first saw the photograph in Theodora Fitzgibbon’s A Taste of Scotland – evidently a regional cook-book with touristic overtones. But the whimsy about not believing in the mainland is an invented one, virtually signposted as such, and sounds as though it emanates from the poet rather than the photographer – a poet coyly aware of playing with tourist ...”

“... nature some of the finest qualities of the ruler’; Carlingford is her ‘kingdom’. Nancy, the cook, is taken for ‘her prime minister’. At various points Lucilla is likened to a general, a warrior and Joan of Arc. Waiting to spring a surprise, ‘Miss Marjoribanks was looking to the joints of her harness, and feeling the edge of her weapons.’ On ...”

“... Essex, a place with a long history of boat-building and Dionysiac boho revels: Francis Bacon, John Deakin and ‘Dicky’ Chopping, who made a fortune designing the dust jackets for James Bond books, all drank in the Rose & Crown on the quayside at Wivenhoe. Constable condensed the dominant myth of the English countryside in his painting of a haywain ...”

“... gather a false conclusion from these true premises.’ In a work of 1744, The Female Monarchy, John Thorley was as repelled by the idea of the queen bee being an exemplar to women as Warder had been delighted to compare the queen bee to Queen Anne. He abominated the notion then gaining ground that the drones might have sex with the queen. She was ...”

“... by the princess herself, though since she was wearing a flowery apron they assumed she was the cook. She told them to leave, and they did.Three years later, Hitler arrived in Rome to meet Mussolini. He wanted to visit the Doria Pamphilj picture gallery, home to Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X. The authoritative gaze Velázquez gives the pope is ...”

“... like Peter, Juba is an Eldorado: he earns three times more here than he could at home.Outside the John Garang mausoleum, a vast empty lot surrounded by a tall iron fence with gilded spikes, I suddenly find myself swallowed up in a swarming crowd. All along the fence, thousands of people are patiently waiting in line. In the street, among policemen and ...”

“... own man, Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, a retired High Court Judge. He was to be supported by John Sentamu, the Anglican Bishop of Stepney, Tom Cook, former Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, and Richard Stone, Chairman of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. The Lawrences decided that Sir William was an ...”

“... substantial minority under 18th-century mortality levels. At some point in their lives Adam Smith, John Miller, William Robertson and David Hume began to question the theology in which they had been reared: Camic is convinced that ‘their revolution was a union of circumstances’ – in other words, that it was their rearing which freed them for it. That ...”

“... memorialist or seanchaidh, whose stories were edited into a book by the great Gaelic scholar John Lorne Campbell. Her words had gone on buzzing and irking in a corner of my brain. Most sources are agreed that the people left Pabbay and the last two islands in the chain, Mingulay and Berneray, quite freely, in a final despair at the harshness of the ...”

“... author of the Shilling Cookery Book, sailed to the Crimea, where he showed that it was possible to cook cheap, nourishing and palatable food for large numbers of men, inventing in the process the Soyer Stove, which the army used for generations. But perhaps the truest hero of the war was the Russian doctor Nikolai Pirogov. He pioneered field surgery, a ...”