“... of a strength than a weakness. It absolved her from ever being wrong.’ She was born Georgina Thomas, in the year of Queen Victoria’s succession, to parents who were howling snobs. Morgan Thomas, her father, who had failed to win Coventry for the Tories, made no secret that he intended to match her with a suitor worth ...”

“... likely to come when least expected. Unforgettable, in Volume One, is his message of condolence to Henry Rider Haggard on the death of his ten-year-old son: ‘to be candid, I think the death of a child is never really to be regretted, when one reflects on what he has escaped.’ Such a view does not prevent the joke he makes in congratulating another ...”

“... not blackshirts. But Karl Kraus and Joseph Roth had something to fear from their masses. When Thomas Mann condemns ‘the vulgarity of Hitler’ and laments, in his diaries, the ‘wretched, isolated, demented people, misled by a wild and stupid band of adventurers whom they take for mythical heroes’, is this an example of literary pride and prejudice ...”

“... told us that his Aretina (1660) was the first novel by a Scotsman (and he mght have mentioned Sir Thomas Urquhart). It is misleading to describe Viscount Dundee as a ‘romantic Jacobite’. He was as committed a Protestant as those he fought against, leading an army that was Protestant only in part. Convictions were everywhere and romanticism an unheard-of ...”

“... The absurdity of the Gothick was captured and its pretensions crisply punctured by Jane Austen and Thomas Love Peacock, but reality was often stranger than anything that even the most fetid literary imagination could come up with. Nothing could have been odder, more menacing or even more prophetic – when viewed with hindsight – than the Broken Column built ...”

“... one of them! (Gingrich actually does say this.) But, as he insists with frequent reference to Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and others, there is simply no point in being an American if you doubt the boundlessness of innovation, opportunity and mass-marketing. Why, in the information economy, ‘you may know more than anyone ...”

“... as ‘a person without an alternative’, the very worst fate that can befall anyone in a Henry James novel, and all he thinks about is his neighbour’s legacy, or more precisely ‘what old Frank would have done with the fruits of his swindle, on the occasion of the rupture that had kept them apart in hate and vituperation for so many ...”

“... In the spring or summer of 1599, the Chorus of Henry V, in Shakespeare’s only explicit reference to a contemporary politician, looked forward to the return of the 33-year-old Earl of Essex from his campaign in Ireland, ‘bringing rebellion broached on his sword’ – a light touch from which some heavy inferences have been drawn ...”

“... Arcadia. Shakespeare complete. Raleigh’s History of the World. Bacon complete. The Bible. Sir Thomas Browne complete. Milton, including the prose works. Cowley, Waller and Denham. Dryden, including the prose works and the translations. Samuel Butler complete. Pope complete, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. Addison complete. Steele complete. Swift ...”

“... Caroline may have been another. It’s possible that her father was the playwright and politician Thomas Brinsley Sheridan. Such parentage would be far more in accordance with Caroline’s character and behaviour than that of her official father. Douglass finds the balance of evidence against it, yet it remains an attractive possibility. Caroline had an ...”

“... the sizable slum which adjoined Whitehall. There was no welcome for them in the West End (founder: Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans). In any event, by this time the heart of London, that ‘flower of cities all’, had become a poisonous place for the rich, as the dwellers in those great riverfront palaces, York House, Northumberland House, Exeter House and ...”

“... American who had likewise profited and who had then become – as Eliot would – an Englishman: Henry James. ‘The fact of being everywhere a foreigner was probably an assistance to his native wit.’ And Donald Davie, who everywhere has his native wits about him, has he profited much from living abroad? In half-praise of George Steiner, Davie floats ‘a ...”

“... of Edward III, surviving the tumultuous reign of Richard II (1377-99), and gaining the favour of Henry IV before what must have been a rather sudden death in 1400. To contextualise his career, Turner provides an extensive political, social, economic and cultural history of England over the second half of the 14th century. But our first glimpse of the young ...”

“... catch his eye. ‘You, sir, are a drunkard, and some of you are whoremasters’ (he’s looking at Henry Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth). Then he points to the Speaker up in his chair: ‘Fetch him down.’ When the Speaker doesn’t budge, he shouts, ‘Put him out,’ and a couple of members, rather unwillingly, drag him down, and he is marched out without ...”

“... problem. A further alternative would be to adopt the stylised format of Who’s Who or Debrett (Henry VIII, 2nd s of Henry VII, qv, S 1509: m 1st, Catherine of Aragon; 2nd, Anne Boleyn; 3rd, Jane Seymour; 4th, Anne of Cleves; 5th, Catherine Howard; 6th, Catherine Parr etc). The authors have made their own ...”