“... disjunction between them in Bobbio’s account is rather different from how it is set out in The Prince. Ascesis, prohibition, prescription, self-repression can be ‘bad’ means to a good end – ‘bad’ in the sense that unless they contribute to that end, they cannot be commended as ways of life in themselves. But history, alas, has seen to it that ...”

“... to ‘show … the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’. He cites this remark of Prince Hamlet’s as evidence that ‘Shakespeare certainly thought of his art in this way’ (though only a couple of pages afterwards he criticises earlier commentators for naively or disingenuously trawling the utterances of Shakespeare’s characters for ...”

“... Jardine who masterminded the notorious ‘bodyline’ tactics of Larwood and Voce; as captain, Peter May too was criticised for short-pitched bowling, time-wasting and nullifying the immortal Sonny Ramadhin’s fiendish spin by simply kicking the ball away down the leg side.It was axiomatic that only the upper-class amateur possessed the leadership ...”

“... funny account of provincial literary neurosis, had appeared in book form in 1972, and Peter Carey’s ‘American Dreams’, a post-Vietnam satire, in 1974. David Foster’s first novel, The Pure Land, came out in 1975, and, deceptively to one side in the same year, stood Johnno, David Malouf’s first prose work. ‘It spread, throughout the ...”

“... in front of the court itself, a timid-looking, hair-waxed gentleman stops for the cameras. It’s Peter Badge, the Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate: the hearing will take place before him, and he will make the decision as to whether there’s a case to be tried or not. He looks like a little chaffinch. ‘Mr Badge,’ we are told later, ‘is ...”

“... like a cartoon wolf while motorbikes crash in her wake.What’s Up, Doc? was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, fresh from the success of The Last Picture Show. For the first time Streisand was in the hands of a director her own age and a denizen of New Hollywood. Bogdanovich, ever the auteur, had worked out every beat to his own exact specifications. In ...”

“... Anxious to work out where the rot started, they follow the interwar mansion blocks placed on Prince Albert Road along the northern edge of Regent’s Park – one of their more surprising inclusions – as they gradually abandon any sense of urbanity and order in favour of banal commercialism and architectural fads. If some ‘show that modern ...”

“... his act may look dull and formulaic: he simply got uppity with a luckless straight man called Peter Brough and showered him with childish insults. But he was able to bring on a troop of co-stars – Max Bygraves (‘I’ve arrived … and to prove it, I’m here!’), Tony Hancock, Gilbert Harding, Harry Secombe, Beryl Reid, Bernard Miles and Hattie ...”

“... The press attended the dress-rehearsal at the Opéra Garnier in which Nureyev danced the role of Prince Désiré in Sleeping Beauty. The critic René Sirvin, alluding to the recent orbit of Yuri Gagarin, wrote a piece about the Kirov’s own ‘spaceman’, an ‘aerial phenomenon of a stupefying virtuosity and lightness’. So there was enormous ...”

“... barren-spirited fellow … a property’. From this stems a still familiar, theatrical sense. Peter Quince, preparing the rude mechanicals’ show in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, says: ‘I will draw a bill of properties.’ Maus does not entirely ignore theatrical properties. She makes the shrewd point that there is often a tight fit between subject and ...”

“... of the poems. It is the regal touch. Life Studies are Lowell studies, in the same way that a prince of the blood might become absorbed, without either self-consciousness or false modesty, in compiling an intimate dynastic chronicle. The word ‘Lowell’ occurs and recurs in the same spaciously necessary way. The poet’s father wears his ‘oval Lowell ...”

“... was born in Torquay in 1867. His father was a blue-blooded spendthrift and crony of the Prince of Wales, who died young of alcohol and consumption when Fawcett was 17, and is chiefly remembered as a brilliant batsman for Cambridge University and Sussex. Fawcett too was a fine cricketer, following his father in that, though diametrically opposed to ...”

“... is common with cult journals, Die Fackel’s subscribers were as illustrious as its contributors: Peter Altenberg, Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Heinrich Mann, Schoenberg, Strindberg, Trakl and Wedekind (whose play Spring Awakening Franzen translated in 1986 and published in 2007). Kafka was a loyal reader, as was Benjamin, who regarded Die Fackel as the literary ...”

“... yet historically grounded. The visit was greatly enhanced by his friend and travelling companion Peter Beuth, head of the Prussian Department of Trade. Beuth had visited Britain before and wrote to Schinkel from Manchester in 1823 that ‘only here ... the machinery and buildings can be found commensurate with the miracles of modern times – they are called ...”

“... sorry ‘for the poor chaps who haven’t got labs to work in’. Supported by that legacy of Prince Albert’s far-sighted interest in science, an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, Rutherford arrived in Cambridge in September 1895, only a few months before Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays and Becquerel’s of radioactivity ushered in a revolution in ...”