“... his foundations. Lawrence was given, like Céline, to overstatement: ‘It would be nice if the Lord sent another flood and drowned the world,’ he wrote to Lady Ottoline. This is the sum of Carey’s quotation. But Lawrence’s letter continues: ‘Probably I should want to be Noah. I am not sure,’ which is funny and human and fallen – not that Carey ...”

“... book is a magisterial study of a great popular artist: a full-scale interpretation of James Gillray’s output of satirical prints, and a biography that warrants comparison with the best ever done on an 18th-century artist. It has been furnished with gorgeous reproductions, along with close-ups that illuminate Gillray’s care for visual detail ...”

“... for Fair Women has a particular interest because it was performed by Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It is the earliest of four crime dramas associated with the company. The date of its first performance is guesswork, perhaps c.1594-95; it is sometimes claimed as an early work by Thomas Heywood. The title page of the quarto outlines the ...”

“... with the remit contained in the white paper which set it up. It is not the leading judgment of Lord Parker which today merits rereading bur the second one, in which Lord Justice Diplock observed that what was in dispute was the last unclaimed prize of the constitutional conflicts of the 17th century. Government had ...”

“... to make political statements. Rubens’s Whitehall ceiling pays tribute to Charles’s father, James VI and I, promotes an exalted image of monarchy and attests to the grandeur of the House of Stuart. Its great central panel, The Glorification of James I, shows a scene of apotheosis. ...”

“... When Henry James’s play, Guy Domville, was booed off the London stage, the embarrassed author remarked that at least some of the audience was clapping. These approvers were powerless to out-clamour the ‘hoots and jeers and catcalls of the roughs’, whose roars were ‘like those of a cage of beasts at some infernal zoo’, but for James they represented ‘the forces of civilisation ...”

“... Defence, was grounded after a sustained campaign by the tireless Scot. Again, he helped to defeat James Callaghan’s legislation designed to provide a devolved government for Scotland. But no occupant of 10 Downing Street has been the target of so relentless an onslaught at his hands as Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Now, with all the zeal of a Dickensian ...”

“... nor the nickname is mentioned by Sir John in his autobiography.) We are regaled with details of James Pope-Hennessy’s fatal passion for rough trade. I was taken aback when, later in the book, Lord Weidenfeld is rebuked for recounting events at which he wasn’t present. When John Richardson was present one often has to ...”

“... life, are full of evidence. It is evidence that suggests the nature of relations, and as Henry James observed ‘relations stop nowhere.’ An author, no less than a lawyer, must ‘draw the circle in which they shall happily appear to do so’. From a literary point of view, Crusoe’s find was surely not so much evidence as atmosphere. What strikes the ...”

“... as a young woman. Louisa May Alcott thought Kemble ‘a whole stock company in herself’. Henry James, who recalled hearing her read King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a boy in London, professed himself still waiting some forty years later ‘for any approach to the splendid volume of Mrs Kemble’s “Howl, howl, howl!” in the one, or to the ...”

“... men are not overdressed. The most elaborately dressed military man that I have ever seen was Lord Mountbatten, got up to take the salute at what I think was a rehearsal of the Trooping of the Colour. His uniform would have been the envy of the Kaiser, and would have made an Argentine general look like a dustman. The person I have met who was most moved ...”

“... How can we know Samuel Johnson without summoning him through the reanimating power of James Boswell’s Life? For the many scholars, writers, readers and collectors who call themselves Johnsonians, this is the near impossible task. Boswell first met Johnson in 1763, in the back parlour of a bookshop. It belonged to a friend of Johnson, Thomas ...”

“... they had offended his father), the notoriety given them in speeches by the attorney-general and Lord Sidmouth, the home secretary, both of whom anticipated the judgment of the court by telling Parliament that the parodies were libellous, ensured that they were republished in major towns and cities from Southampton to Newcastle. The government determined to ...”

“... Establishment is that she is reputedly flirting with Roman Catholicism. This inspires those like Lord Rees-Mogg to hope that the hapless Diana may finally shatter the Act of Settlement of 1701 which banned Catholic monarchs from inheriting this kingdom, and heirs to the throne from marrying Catholics. After all, even if she divorces her husband, she will ...”

“... digging coal mines. In the British view, India’s destiny was to remain what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson called in Why Nations Fail (2012) an ‘extractive colony’. The Raj was seen at its worst in the hardest times, responding to poor harvests and the resulting famines as reluctantly as the home government did in Ireland. The last large-scale ...”