“... and the electric motor, those icons of modernity. His reputation survived more than a decade as Margaret Thatcher’s favourite scientist: between 1982 and 1996 Matthew Noble’s bust occupied a place of honour in the entrance hall at Number Ten. His stock has risen slowly and steadily; compare this with the Nasdaq-esque slumps and booms of Darwin’s ...”

“... to rabbits and steak had to be pushed through a drum sieve and, as Landemare’s contemporary Margaret Powell recalled laconically, ‘This wasn’t easy.’ Every kitchen maid’s ambition was to learn enough to move up the service hierarchy. Landemare managed this in 1901, when she went to work for Edward Dunbar Kilburn, who had made a fortune in the ...”

“... line in ex-boyfriends, including John Bindon, an actor-gangster who had holidayed with Princess Margaret and was tried for murder. The days of wine and roses for the pre-hyphenated Windsors left a few stains on the carpet, but the royals still acted as if they were beyond reproach.Mummy loved Andrew, and what Mummy loved, Mummy protected. By 1984, it seemed ...”

“... is margarita, leading many commentators to assume that the child’s name was Margery or Margaret). He can’t even bring himself to say that she was his daughter, just that she was closer ‘than aunt or niece’. He is obsessed with his loss and has come to visit her grave. ‘Allas! I leste hyr in on erbere [a grassy plot]/My privy perle withouten ...”

“... into accepting real wage cuts while refusing to take money wage cuts. More moderately, Mervyn King of the Bank of England devoted part of this year’s ESRC lecture, and an article in the Guardian, to warning against Akerlof, because although there was no evidence on the question either way, ‘monetary stability would surely do more good than ...”

“... changed his tune. Most of the chapter ‘Race in Utopia’ could be quoted by Martin Luther King without embarrassment. There are no ‘inferior races’, Wells now asserts. Nor is there any physiological basis for racial discrimination. ‘Even the Jews’, he observes, have more physical differences within their ethnic group than there are between ...”

“... legislation designed ‘to stamp out feeble-mindedness from future generations’; and in 1919, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was keen to articulate her mission in eugenic terms: ‘More children from the fit, less from the unfit – that is the chief issue of birth control.’ Eugenics, or ‘self-directed evolution’ as it was styled by ...”

“... UK National Conservatism Conference, one fascinating sideshow was the brawl over the carcass of Margaret Thatcher. A few weeks before the event, Ryan Bourne, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute, had warned those attending the conference against ‘importing the worst American narratives into British politics’ and in the process abandoning ...”

“... there, were left out. Torrance suggests that Lansbury’s exclusion was in deference to the king, who had been upset by his criticisms of the monarchy during the election campaign. MacDonald’s restoration as Labour leader in 1922 had relied on support from left-wing MPs, but he clearly did not feel indebted to them. Treating members of the cabinet as ...”

“... gave him a myth to demolish or re-create.Part of the problem with this myth is that it begins with King Sebastião, whose death in battle in 1578 led to the end of what is called Portugal’s Golden Age and the annexation of the country by Spain in 1580. It ends with the rise of António de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968. The death of ...”

“... knew what to celebrate. At the start of the opening ceremony – a service in St Paul’s – the King praised the nation’s courage in the world wars; the official handbook declared categorically that ‘Britain is a Christian Community’; brightly coloured pavilions on the South Bank paid tribute to picturesque countryside, seaside holidays and an ...”

“... know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too’ – an odd slogan to get young girls to learn.11 In fact, it is quite likely that she never said anything of the sort. There is no script from her hand or that of her speech-writer, no ...”

“... as a follower first of the earls of Ulster and then of the earls of Chester, and finally of the King. He was a royalist captain I215-16 and rewarded by John with lands. Under Henry III he continued to prosper and became a baron. His son James (c.1220-77) was a royalist too in the Barons’ Wars and became Justiciar of Ireland in 1270. Two of his sons had ...”

“... about William Morris and Mariano Fortuny. She wrote about Cambridge, where she and her sister Margaret Drabble were educated in the 1950s, and about the landscape of Yorkshire, where they were raised. She wrote about the educational revolution of the 1960s and the purple goose-pimpled legs of English women in miniskirts. She wrote about air raids and ...”

“... Geoffrey Heald, the priest who introduced Olivier to acting at the choir school of All Saints Margaret Street, and played Petruchio to his 13-year-old Katharina in The Shrew, told him to read Dickens – as an actor, he would never want for characterisations. The early chapters of Olivier’s Confessions are written in Dickensian pastiche, even borrowing ...”