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“... siege?’ Catherine de Medici asked. ‘Greater even than Rhodes?’ ‘Yes, madame,’ the knight commander Antoine de La Roche answered, ‘greater even than Rhodes. It was the greatest siege in history.’ Catherine’s constable, Anne de Montmorency, had been arguing for Rhodes, but even he had to concede that ...”

“... virulent, as well as being frequently obscene and licentious. The reigns of William III and Queen Anne were marked by intense political partisanship, and the language used in attacks on government and parliament provoked retaliation. The Stamp Duty Act of that year caused Swift to lament ‘that all Grub Street is ruined.’ This was an exaggeration. The ...”

“... he was hanged his goods were condemned at £6472.1s.0d. When the legal wrangling was over, Queen Anne granted this sum to the commissioners for Greenwich Hospital and with it they bought the land needed for completing the splendid plan. But people love to believe, and in spite of all the sensible reasons against the existence of Captain Kidd’s buried ...”

“... Orson Welles’s film, Chimes at Midnight, make a brilliant case, in different ways, for the old knight’s generous, even loving, even saintly cast of character. Yet these remarkable studies, like more recent writing with a radical stance (Greenblatt’s powerful essay, ‘Paper Bullets’, would be a case in point), do little to dislodge the intellectual ...”

“... Bartholomew spoke of a ‘king bee’ being waited on and defended by serf bees, esquire bees and knight bees, and going forth from the hive only in the company of a swarm of vassal bees. The king bee was evidently superior to the other bees because it was bigger. Wilson has tracked the model of the hive as perceived by English intellectuals, mutating ...”

“... as heightened projections of the local. No one would have mistaken Athens and Thebes in ‘The Knight’s Tale’ or Troy in Troilus and Criseyde for classical reconstructions. Theseus builds a vast theatre for the tournament of Palamon and Arcite just as Chaucer himself, as clerk of the works, oversaw the construction of lists for the jousting at ...”

“... us – he rounded on the bishops who came to plead that he would go with them to the coronation of Anne Boleyn: ‘Though your lordships have in the matter of the matrimony hitherto kept yourselves pure virgins, yet take good heed, my lords, that you keep your virginity still ... It lieth not in my power but that they may devour me. But, God being my good ...”

“... Gibbons, which he sometimes wore to answer the door, and a clock that Henry VIII had given to Anne Boleyn. His house was open to visitors if they applied for tickets and Walpole would show them round himself. What it all meant, however, was less easy to see. ‘Horrie’ was described by one of his many detractors as a man who wore ‘mask within ...”

“... four of Margaret’s children lived to adulthood. Her husband’s career flourished. He was made knight of the Garter, and appointed chamberlain to the young Prince of Wales. Margaret may have been deprived of her dynastic importance, but her marriage was honourable and stable, and she retained her status, if not her family’s great titles and wealth. Her ...”

“... Charlotte Sophia chastising her son William for being ‘a true trifling character’, emigrant Anne Francis on the ants and jackals greeting colonists in South Africa, Fanny Burney on her mastectomy, two reports of witnessing executions and five different accounts of hot-air balloon voyages. There is John Addington Symonds’s description of Tennyson and ...”

“... as an upper age limit for marital prospects in Pride and Prejudice; it is also the age at which Anne Elliot in Persuasion (1817) marries a former lover whose loss had seemed irrevocable. When Charlotte Lucas decides to accept Mr Collins, a man deemed insufferable by the younger, more rebellious Elizabeth Bennet, the narrator offers a series of crisp remarks ...”

“... baron or bishop should use the blunt address ‘man’ or ‘woman’ and that a baronet, knight or physician should say ‘friend’. This sounds like a hack etiquette writer running wild. Wisely, Dr Hembry makes no attempt to assess the individual virtues of any given spa water, whether cold, hot, gaseous, stinking or holy. The medical analysis of ...”

“... lengthy feature quoted experts from the menswear designer Alan Flusser to the fashion historian Anne Hollander, who noted that ‘Bush looking casual on his ranch appears as if he’s the master of untold acres … It looks as if he owns Texas rather than governs it.’ Gore’s efforts to look relaxed were mocked by Flusser, who said his clothes ‘seemed ...”

“... Alongside the monuments Bray presents and describes are some startling texts. On 12 February 1834, Anne Lister recorded in her diary her plans to solemnise her union with Ann Walker: ‘She is to give me a ring & I her one in token of our union.’ Their relationship ‘would be as good as a marriage’, Ann had said. ‘Yes,’ said ...”

“... early 19th-century Britain (the recently rediscovered diaries of Austen’s lesbian contemporary, Anne Lister, are an example) – one is struck not so much by the letters’ hastiness or triviality as by the passionate nature of the sibling bond they commemorate. Sororal or pseudo-sororal attachments are arguably the most immediately gratifying human ...”