“... of steam trains and ocean liners. In the years between his appearance in Chicago and his early death in 1902, he became the face of a quintessentially modern – because newly global – form of religiosity.Harris’s sprawling biography lucidly explores the moment when religious figures became conscious of themselves as global actors. In books on the ...”

“... commemorating the 75th anniversary of her electrifying Paris debut and the 25th anniversary of her death. With its pictures of Baker costumed and nude (and often both at the same time), with some fantastic outfits she actually wore and film of her dancing on stage, with snapshots of her among friends and admirers, the show recaptures the self-knowingly playful ...”

“... this person from the violinist, there would be ‘no injustice’, tragic though the violinist’s death would be. The third party might even be seen as a good Samaritan, according to Thomson. Why? Because, in such a situation, ‘you cannot extricate yourself.’In describing third parties as ‘good Samaritans’, Thomson was probably not thinking of Madame ...”

“... have taken a Manhattan avant-gardist brought up as a scion of the Bank of Tokyo and educated at Sarah Lawrence to cut through this bedraggled but corrupt crew. But what Ono seems to have told Lennon is only another version of the sort of advice Arthur Ballard seems to have already given him. Ono insisted that he was an artist and ought to be proud of ...”

“... Even a smile​ could put Charles Lamb in mind of death. ‘The fine ladies, or fine gentlemen, who show me their teeth,’ he wrote, ‘show me bones.’ He cared not ‘to be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity’.I am in love with this green earth, – the face of town and country, – the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets … Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and Summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself – do these things go out with life?Faced with the ‘inevitable spoiler’, Lamb lived as many lives as he could ...”

“... With the death of Michel Foucault the end of another era of French philosophy suddenly seems imminent. Jean-Paul Sartre died long after the Existentialist era had dwindled, and that phase of his philosophical work had been absorbed. Like Jacques Lacan’s death, however, Foucault’s comes at a point where debate has not settled the question of either the viability of his vision or the importance of the Post-Structuralist period ...”

“... over the two years of war, most as a result of famine – figures comparable to or higher than the death toll over a decade of war in Syria. The facts were known. But wasn’t Ethiopia the land of famines? What were a few more corpses floating down the Tekeze?With the exception of a brief threat to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in November 2021, the war ...”

“... present self to his old self: sometimes from his old self to his present self. Referring to the death of his mother, ‘I, once a lord of language,’ he says, ‘have no words to express my anguish and my shame.’ Straightway he proceeds to revel in the survival of that lordship. ‘What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper ...”

“... a milkmaid and a lady” – to the elegant Sir Charles Bunbury, formerly the husband of the Lady Sarah Lennox with whom George III had been so much in love before duty forced him to marry his German queen.’ There’s also a Victorianism of outlook, in assertions such as one to the effect that Mrs Siddons’s loss of popularity at one time was the fault ...”

“... novels about relationships and family. In a profile of Peters published in New York magazine, Sarah Schulman wondered if the novel’s accessibility would signal the end, rather than the beginning, of a period in which trans literature has flourished. Those concerned about the death of counterculture and the flattening ...”

“... up against their will or inclination in the steady expansion of the Empire. Take the case of Sarah Shade, an agricultural servant from Herefordshire who, in 1769, fled to India with her stepfather (who may also have been her lover). She found herself the only woman on board a ship carrying East India Company soldiers, to one of whom her stepfather tried ...”

“... Dinner in 20 minutes when Daddy gets home.” Max replies instantly. “I ate with Sarah and Penelope already. Bye.” ’ There is something eerie about the joke and Andersen’s humour is often dark; his characters can seem uncomfortable not only with the shape of things to come, but with a future that arrived too soon. ‘Do other people get ...”

“... thought not much different from the Tories. The only MP who appears to have understood that was Sarah Teather (Brent Central) who was sacked from her ministerial post and decided not to stand again. Unsurprisingly, having reneged on their manifesto promise to scrap tuition fees, the Lib Dems lost wherever students bothered to vote. The Lib Dem collapse in ...”

“... in the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy, which wasn’t founded until after Hogarth’s death. They are mostly ‘friendship portraits’. Hogarth painted Benjamin Hoadly, for example, at least three times. He was a physician, a mathematician, an FRS from the age of twenty, and the author of a comedy, The Suspicious Husband, that was a staple in the ...”

“... to work through. Consider the terrible outbreak of plague in the 14th century known as the Black Death. Europe suffered disproportionately, losing perhaps 50 per cent of its total population. One result of this, however, was that the living standards and wages of many of those who survived seem to have improved. This, it has been suggested, led in time to a ...”