“... the author of the political play The Spanish Gipsy that was performed at Whitehall after Prince Charles’s return from Madrid in 1623, ‘the prince only being there’. Not all political literature was aimed at the Court or at the nobility that encircled it, as Alastair Bellany’s The Politics of Court Scandal, which examines the spread and impact of ...”

“... but a strong sense of constitutional probity, then one might expect to find some evidence that the King-in-waiting was warned to be circumspect. But there’s not a hint, in all of Ziegler’s industrious fossickings, of any concern on that score. There was some royal pursing of the lips at his levity and laziness – despite costly tuition, he never achieved ...”

“... Tudors rather than Henry VI gave us that incomparable monument of late medieval English Gothic, King’s College chapel, but the Protestant Reformation made it difficult to exploit a royal saintly cult. After some spirited ceremonial experiments in the opening months of the reign of Henry VIII’s son Edward, another boy-...”

“... Bertie – now 21 – ‘shows more and more how totally, totally unfit he is for ever becoming King!’ Neither Victoria nor the constitution could prevent him from ascending to the throne on her death. It didn’t matter. Bertie – this generally amiable but foolish and corpulent cigar-smoking, tiger-shooting adulterer – was a perfectly respectable ...”

“... Flecknoe, Absalom and Achitophel). There is panegyric: on Cromwell (Heroic Stanzas), on Charles II (Astraea Redux, To His Sacred Majesty), on the new baby heir to James II (Britannia Rediviva); though never on William and Mary. Theological disputation, first Anglican in complexion (Religio Laici), then Roman Catholic (The Hind and the ...”

“... safer with a fifty-year-old President. Other stock characters are borrowed from fiction, notably King Solomon’s Mines, which D.M. Thomas read with interest when he was a small boy in Australia. Like other boys, he wondered what sort of quarterdeck language Commander Good used when he was swearing at Zulus and whether he responded erotically to the devotion ...”

“... English poets. Sexually ambivalent, a notorious member of the gang of young roués at the court of Charles II, he nevertheless managed to write a few poignant and haunting poems which suggest that his public notoriety concealed a sensibility reacting to the intellectual crisis of the later 17th century. All my past life is mine no more;   The Flying hours ...”

“... Jahrhundert (1888), an example which has rarely been followed. Brown’s next book, A Palace for a King (1980), written in collaboration with a ‘plain’ historian, John Elliott, studied the court of Philip IV and the building of the Palace of the Buen Retiro on the outskirts of Madrid. Behind the enterprise loomed the massive figure of Philip’s first ...”

“... here of Titian’s friend and public-relations manager, Pietro Aretino, and his greatest patron, King Philip of Spain, are rich in revealing detail and seem, by contrast, fully rounded. No reliable record survives of the way Titian conducted himself in the company of friends, let alone in private. The Ferrarese ambassador in 1522 claims that the artist is ...”

“... This took some nerve. Baxter remarks that he had thoughtfully said ‘monarchy’ rather than ‘King Charles’ for prudential reasons: ‘I was fain to speak of the species of government only, for they had lately made it treason by a law to speak for the person of the king.’ Really, C.H. Sisson ought to have ...”

“... romance. Anna’s anti-imperialism has to be gently expressed, but her first father-in-law, Sir Charles Winterbourne, has no inhibitions. She recounts his ‘tirade against the Empire – or rather, the spirit of Empire, for he is angered equally by the doings of Kitchener in South Africa, the King of the Belgians in the ...”

“... provided a titillating soap opera centuries before the term was invented. Through the media, Charles and Di, the Queen Mum and Fergie, Wills and Harry have become familiar household presences. But though their personal foibles and imperfections have a fascination, we prefer most of the time an idealised rather than a mundane representation of daily ...”

“... rather than bloodstains. Fashions change, but monarchical regalia tends towards ossification: Charles III and Camilla left their coronation this year swathed in robes of ermine-trimmed purple, just as George III and his queen consort, Charlotte, did in 1761. Underneath her robes, Charlotte wore something more singular: her stomacher – the triangular ...”

“... in 1603, Hilliard remained famous and busy, but he was never quite at home in the Jacobean age. King James renewed his patent as the royal limner, and sat for him, but his Danish consort, Queen Anne, a more proactive patron, favoured Oliver; her passion for masques brought a new line of fantastically costumed court ladies into his repertoire. Oliver died in ...”

“... bliss, Phoebe runs off with Horace the epileptic poet, abandoning Herbert with their two children, Charles and Sonia. Book Two moves forward to 1931. For seven years, Herbert has been bumming about Victoria, living with his kids in the back of a 1924 Dodge tourer, ‘writing bad cheques ... running raffles in pubs, buying stolen petrol, ransacking local tips ...”