“... the Phoenician alphabet, Champollion and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Magnus Celsius and Staveless Runes, Michael Ventris and Linear B, Edward Hincks and Akkadian cuneiform, Yuri Knorozov and Maya glyphs. These were undeniable intellectual achievements. They were also endeavours tinged with madness. How else could anyone persist with such fiendishly difficult ...”

“... to clamber round the intricate corridors of another octagon, the very strange Red Mount Chapel in King’s Lynn, which seems to be some 15th-century Norfolk pilgrim’s effort to reproduce either the tangled claustrophobia of Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or the outward appearance of the Dome of the Rock, which Christian tour-guides in Jerusalem ...”

“... 1352, which is still on the statute book, treason consists of ‘Compassing the Death of the King, Queen, or their eldest Son; violating the Queen, or the King’s eldest Daughter unmarried, or his eldest Son’s Wife; levying War; adhering to the King’s Enemies; killing the ...”

“... like some pop-star badge, an enamel medallion exhibiting a boar – the emblem of her favourite king. To my regret, I could not make out whether she was also wearing the ring and bracelet which usually go with the medallion. Reality had outdone fiction. This little Tube scene I shall always retain as the epitome of a certain vision of Britain today – a ...”

“... Hope’ (1986) ‘Naked’ (1988) ‘Balloon Dog’ (1994-2000) ‘Bear and Policeman’ (1998) ‘Michael Jackson and Bubbles’ (1988)PreviousNext Koons broke through in the early 1980s with a series titled ‘The New’ consisting of store-bought vacuum cleaners and other pristine appliances; set on or placed inside fluorescent light boxes, each immaculate ...”

“... a complication has emerged, which threatens to bar our family’s return to its amnesiac state. Michael Collins, Neil Jordan’s film, is not about us as a family, but we are part of its revolutionary story and provide much of its romance. In May 1917, Michael Collins came down for a few days to Longford, one of those ...”

“... Two bishops side by side put pressure at long range on the pawns defending the castled Black king. My queen, ready to advance to the middle of the board, completes the threat. Black will have to weaken his defence by advancing a pawn. There are further forces I can bring into play. I find it slightly frustrating that my mechanical opponent either knows what I mean to do or has taken standard precautions: there’s a knight in the way, and I can’t get at it ...”

“... history. On the only occasion that I knowingly met a Cambridge spy, I broached the same question. Michael Straight, a distinguished East Coast American liberal and publisher (he had run the New Republic during the queasy years of McCarthy, and if exposed during that period could have helped discredit a cause larger than himself in much the same way as the ...”

“... William Rees-Mogg – do not wish to argue that the Americans or, say, the Swiss ought to have a king. And many would probably be embarrassed to have the Windsors bracketed with the House of Saud or the Sultan of Brunei – although these are the only two monarchies to compare with them in wealth: the Japanese royal family, though presiding over a far richer ...”

“... the All Party Alliance, although a wit said that his only allies were Anthony Morton, Gordon Ashe, Michael Halliday and other Creasey pseudonyms.) His books were popular but not highly regarded, and this worried and baffled him. Why, he asked me once, was there thought to be so much difference between Creasey and Shakespeare? Wasn’t Macbeth a crime ...”

“... or Drobny (to say nothing of Agassi’s erstwhile brother-in-law Gonzales) could have taken the King of Las Vegas handily, his amazing speed, anticipation and racket control notwithstanding. The core of championship tennis has always been the attacking, i.e. serve and volley game. Ground strokes were important for opening up the court, making an approach to ...”

“... the paper, then under the nominal direction of a senile manager and an infant editor. Parnell, Michael Davitt and the Land League were accused of having inspired agrarian outrages including murder, arson, horse-gelding and cattle-houghing. Certainly they had developed ostracism as a weapon, causing it to be christened the ‘Boycott’ after the landlord ...”

“... early decades of this century, some Africans financed their pilgrimage by selling their children. Michael Wolfe’s The Hadj is the story of an American convert’s pilgrimage made in 1990. Wolfe, who also writes novels, conscientiously avoids the politics of the contemporary hajj and his responses seem curiously muted. He enjoyed many encounters with his ...”

“... than the better-known The Forest Lovers I loved The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay, about King Richard the Lion-Hearted, published in 1900 ... the medieval romances I was writing at top speed on an empty stomach were meant to be in his manner. I cannot remember whether I showed any of them to Miss Hayward ... and what about “The Rape of the ...”

“... traditional categories of political analysis: no wonder the authors of one 1976 study quoted by Michael Gallagher in this valuable book described Ireland as a ‘persistent deviant case’: i.e. they could not understand it. A few concrete examples from recent events may help to confuse the issue even further. Item: a government whose leader is pledged to a ...”