“... after she left the door of its cage open. The bear was subsequently destroyed on the order of the Prince of Wales. Menagerie is a fact-driven narrative with an exemplary commitment to detail. How much could a person expect to be paid for the upkeep of a marsupial in 1611? William Walker, keeper of fowl at the menagerie in St James’s Park, was paid five ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... seen’. He describes the debris of recent camps – spent ammunition, tins of evaporated milk and Prince Albert crimpcut tobacco, used torch batteries ‘in clusters like animal droppings’. He writes of ‘a heedless imposition on the land and on the people, a rude invasion’. He raises the spectres of oil blowouts, pollution from mine tailings, the ...”

“... Durrell’s Quinx or The Ripper’s Tale concludes a sequence consisting of Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness, Livia or Buried Alive, Constance or Solitary Practices and Sebastian or Ruling Passions. This series of novels-with-two-titles, containing characters with variable names and fluctuating identities, is (as we should expect) suffused with ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... compatriots. In Rome, Catholic priests formed part of the British colony, the genial Scot Peter Grant being ‘an agreeable companion to everybody’ and the Jesuit John Thorpe acting as an agent for the purchase of works of art. Father Thorpe commissioned paintings and furnishings for the chapel of Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, a unique surviving ...”

“... and from above, the yard is one of those places where the city’s built environment seems to peter out and go to seed; though crossed by fences and framed by the sides of buildings, it seems indifferent to any formal order. Fried speaks of a ‘sense of makeshiftness, of an entire environment having been put together, constructed, not in a spirit of ...”

“... mannequin in the Bill Clinton or Felipe González mould – or even a mixture of Billy Graham and Prince Charles. Initially, he seemed prepared to give Blair a chance, comparing him favourably with Keir Hardie – a Benn family hero whose biography Caroline wrote in 1992. But once Blair began to include Lloyd George in the Labour Party’s radical ...”