“... in the Public Works Department, while their sister married two civil servants in succession. John Lawrence, the future viceroy, was one of five brothers working simultaneously in India; John Nicholson, the hero of the siege of Delhi, was one of four brothers who died there. No family, however, sent as many members to ...”

“... sister were suspected of incest when they were discovered in bed together, ‘both bareheaded’. John Donne was exploring a metaphysical extreme of sensuality when he wrote a poem in praise of ‘full nakedness’: a poem which describes his lover’s clothes, but not her body, and in which his hands rove in unexplored places, like those not of a ...”

“... The Beagle had been at sea for nearly four years, and, as he wrote to his Cambridge mentor, John Henslow, Charles Darwin was increasingly anxious to get home: ‘I look forward with joy and interest to [visiting the Galapagos], both as being somewhat nearer to England, & for the sake of having a good look at an active Volcano.’ He had cause to expect ...”

“... determining provision and consumption,’ had to be modified to meet the objections of people like John Smith. A pillar of the old Right of the Party, a man still rooted in its traditions, Smith didn’t feel that Labour had to start all over again. Kinnock became increasingly irritated with people who resisted the Party’s modernisation, whether they came ...”

“... of form and language, blurred distinctions between the real and imaginary, time now and time then. John Barth has written about Barthelme’s ‘nonlinear narration, sportive form and cohabitation of radical fantasy with quotidian detail’. Along with those traits, Brautigan shares with Barthelme his extreme minimalism, the deft placement, or misplacement, of ...”

“... two men, or rather this boy and this man, Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy and Jack Levy, are at the centre of John Updike’s new novel. There can’t be many readers who will begin Terrorist without wondering what Updike – white, Protestant, 74 – thinks he is doing, presuming to be able to inhabit the consciousness of a teenage Arab-American Muslim. Michiko ...”

“... birds and of people. Savage cites at least one scientific study by Tony Angell and several by John Marzluff, the co-authors of a new illustrated book, In the Company of Crows and Ravens. A generalist’s book written by experts, its text considers the role of crows in the human cultural imagination and provides information on their behaviour. Angell’s ...”

“... admiration of patriots in the American colonies. She corresponded with Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, and with Mercy Otis Warren, later herself to become a historian of the American Revolution. In 1784-85 she visited America, meeting George Washington. The next year she visited France, and her final publication, which came out in 1791, was a pamphlet ...”

“... poems, which incorporate verbatim phrases from the street and the news – a literalisation of John Stuart Mill’s claim that poetry is eloquence overheard. Transcription was a pragmatic technique, and a modest one. ‘I was in a state of fascination with the voices of others,’ Notley recalls. ‘I thought as well I probably didn’t have so much to say ...”

“... It was followed by two survey exhibitions, both organised by Janis, that included paintings by John Kane, Horace Pippin, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka ‘Grandma Moses’) and Hirshfield. In They Taught Themselves: American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century (1942), Janis described them as ‘artless, ingenuous, refreshingly innocent’, successors of ...”

“... in 1714, but, when his offers of service were spurned, masterminded the Jacobite Rising of 1715. John Ker of Kersland – a slippery figure and a self-serving confabulist – seems to have plotted during 1707-8 to bring together the opposite extremes of Scottish life, the radical Presbyterian Covenanters of the south-west and Jacobites from north of the ...”

“... experience of terror’ to put the government’s case, such as the Glasgow ‘folk hero’ John Smeaton, who wrestled a burning suicide bomber to the ground (nobody got round to asking Smeaton if he had a view on the matter). But what’s really farcical about the situation isn’t that Davis is about to fight a one-man crusade against himself. The ...”

“... of the recordings take the form of interviews, and the presenters don’t make matters any easier; John Lehmann, for example, speaks to Aldous Huxley as if he were questioning him with a view to offering him something at the Foreign Office. Which just goes to show that broadcasting vices existed long before the days of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. None of ...”

“... It’s the dignity at Appomattox of Robert E. Lee Live from Phoenix on TV. That old white warrior John McCain gracefully concedes. Nobly gives the nation what it needs. A thousand years from now, you know it, This day will be remembered, poet. By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Told his message to the people, Told the purport of his ...”

“... how things should look breaks down. Maverick architects then indulge in all kinds of impropriety. John Nash’s excursions into an exotic vernacular with his Oriental pavilion at Brighton was to the received style of late 18th-century architecture what Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao was to minimal white-box museum design. Innovative buildings are ...”