“... general for Ireland under James I, these people were ‘little better than cannibals, who do hunt one another; and he that hath most strength and swiftness, doth eat and devour all his fellows.’ Davies’s libel is ambiguously poised between the metaphoric and the literal, like Fynes Moryson’s comment that ‘in their hospitality … these wild Irish ...”

“... plain-minded sensualist, in whose mind art and sexuality mingled easily: in 1899, he complained to William Rothenstein that there was nobody in Dieppe ‘to talk art and fucking with’; after a period spent etching, he reported that its constraints were making him ‘letch for the brush’. He liked dirty old London and his dirty rooms. ‘He loved ...”

“... the basic initiation rite, were developed, Stevenson argues, in Scotland. His hero is William Schaw, master of works to James VI and the member of a feverishly intellectual court. In 1598 and 1599 Schaw issued two sets of statutes which established a system of Lodges for all Scotland. Stevenson contends that Schaw was influenced by Renaissance ...”

“... three years earlier, and the two had formed an immediate but gradually cooling friendship. Leigh Hunt and his family were conveniently near (too conveniently, the Carlyles soon decided). They became friendly with John Sterling and with Harriet Martineau. They would come to know Giuseppe Mazzini, Geraldine Jewsbury, John ...”

“... to the public at large. Impatience with the old ways had spread far beyond the media. Sir John Hunt, a former cabinet secretary, broke cover as early as election day 1983 to voice the discontents of the mandarins:In the absence in our system of a chief executive with his own supporting staff, a ‘hole in the centre’ of government was perceived which an ...”

“... more so because he was speaking immediately after his political chief, the health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Provocatively, Stevens compared the situation in Britain now to the time of the NHS’s birth in 1948, seventy years ago – ‘an economy in disarray, the end of empire, a nation negotiating its place in the world, a need for massive house ...”

“... there, but nobody noticed that, after primary school, Ronnie Pinn was there too, until 1980. In my hunt for the real Ronnie, I thought several times that I saw him in grainy photos posted by ex-pupils on Friends Reunited. Was he not the boy in the white shirt at the edge of a photograph taken in front of the school in 1980, with kids tumbling over each other ...”

“... and, separately, from the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, whose boss, General William Westmoreland, had the Shakespearean sounding title of COMUSMACV. (In the flesh, Westy came over more as a hard-driving business executive.) On one busy day in the flourishing Saigon black market I bought an American fatigue uniform, boots, jungle hat and ...”

“... Museum says. The couple were illustrious knights of the royal chamber of Richard II, Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, ‘the Castor and Pollux of the Lollard movement’, as the medieval historian Bruce McFarlane called them. Neville died just four days after Clanvowe, the inscription records, in October 1391. The Westminster Chronicle ...”

“... selected Letters, maintains exactly that same odd poise vis-à-vis experience. When his brother William wrote him half-disapprovingly and half-anxiously about some of Henry’s more difficult, high-life but off-colour French friends who had descended on them, he replied with quiet satisfaction that he had known just how it would be: ‘It strikes me exactly ...”

“... industry propelled him to the presidency of the SAG. From that platform, he enlisted in the witch hunt – naming names, wrecking careers, ruining lives. He claimed to have accused no individuals in public, but he certainly did so in private. For years, he minimised the importance of the blacklist or denied its existence, even as he assisted in implementing ...”

“... Potter Trivia Evening; it had a Christmas card competition, and one girl was picked to meet Prince William. The school leadership is new, the trust that oversees the running of the school has a new name and the school itself will shortly get a new name too; the most recent monitoring visit from Ofsted showed definite progress. But schools know they are in ...”

“... 1893, when she was nineteen, she enrolled at the Harvard Annex, studying with George Santayana and William James. She seemed set to become a psychologist. But she preferred travelling to studying, and without waiting to graduate she went to Florence to visit Leo, who was training to become a maven of art. It was around this time that Stein began her first ...”

“... Aspects, Woolf said that if she were writing a book about fiction she would feel she must ‘hunt a little’. That sounds like fair comment. Among other contemporaries there were novelists who took a keen practitioner’s interest in developing new ways of relating fabula and syuzhet and, as a mark of their difference, avoiding the straightforward ...”

“... Seals were not happy,’ the retired official said. But most of them kept quiet, as did Admiral William McRaven, who was then in charge of JSOC. ‘McRaven was apoplectic. He knew he was fucked by the White House, but he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Seal, and not then a political operator, and he knew there’s no glory in blowing the whistle on the ...”