“... instantly mythologised, as it were, and communicated to the sympathetic reader. When Prince Henry was christened, what poet but Hughes would have been inspired to dash off a ‘Rain-Charm’, celebrating a downpour that ended a drought, and set the salmon free to leap up over West Country weirs? The splendid poem chants a liberation of rivers – the ...”

“... his bedazzled readers would never have accepted them, as they did, as being completely convincing. Henry James, who admired the bogusness of his brilliant young friend, had long since spotted the paradox involved, and often comically sighed over it. It made him distrust biography as well as the graphic sort of fiction, and by implication relate the two. He ...”

“... were soldiers in the British Army, holding uppity views on mutiny, sedition and the wearing of the green. They duly get their come-uppance in one story at the hands of the good Irishman Mulvaney. Kipling’s view was that the British Empire stood together, solid in all its parts, its model the Roman Empire, where the legions would take any barbarian who would ...”

“... point out that Scott was commissioned to undertake the restoration of the cathedral because Henry Clutton, who had originally been appointed and had done the Chapter House (assisted by William Burges, experimenting with colours), rendered himself ineligible by converting to Catholicism.Had Clutton continued, the cathedral would be a building rather ...”

“... its grip on the population: real people, slipping off the face of that lovely ground, leaving the green – pleasant lands of Northumberland to be nearer the belly – catch scraps with the shit we set out so grudgingly on plates for the blind to eat in gratitude. What makes poetry like this so inhospitable is, ironically, its radical ...”

“... of national prosperity. A ragged girl in a Midlands nail factory was interviewed by Richard Henry Horne. She did not, he reported, ‘know what a country dance is, was never at a dance in her life; never saw a dance; never heard of Harlequin and Columbine; has no idea what they are like.’ Horne, peculiarly, is recalling pantomime conventions that were ...”

“... Master George’s ‘progress in learning I can scarcely say too little’. His father, George Henry Moore, a successful racehorse owner and politician, was convinced his eldest son was a dunce and took the time-honoured step of attempting to browbeat him into an Army career. Moore junior balked at the discipline of military training college and was ...”

“... modern sense of receipts, or texts received: ‘Fine Sauce for a roasted Rabbet: used to king Henry the eight’; ‘To comfort the heart, and take away Melancholy’; ‘To make red sealing Waxe’; ‘Marmalad of Quinces’; ‘To make Oile of Earth wormes … good for the sinews that are cold’; ‘To bake a Capon with yolks of Eggs’; ‘To know ...”

“... desert, with figures trudging towards a horizon of seemingly limitless waste. Here the language of Henry Moore’s truncated nudes reverberates with visions of ruined, pharaonic colossi. ‘The Beloved of the Sayyidah’ by Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (c.1950) Henein and his fellow rebels were utopian dreamers, and sexual freedom too was part of their ...”

“... of the Mass, illustrated with a woodcut image of the Crucifixion hand-coloured in red, blue and green – and another on the facing woodcut of God the Father Enthroned wearing a papal tiara, this slash many leaves deep. Like lots of Catholic books in mid-Tudor England, this book carries the scars of Protestant anger, but it is also a deeply ambiguous ...”

“... have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the f6rlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all ...”

“... too. 20 January. Note how much pleasure I get from anemones. I love their Victorian colours, their green ruffs and how, furry as chestnuts, the blooms gradually open and in so doing turn and arrange themselves in the vase, still retaining their beauty even when almost dead, at every stage of their life delightful. I used to like freesias for their scent (and ...”

“... the Blue Bull. There, beyond the stream, the houses, the century-old turf tramped down into a dark-green, even carpet to suit the needs of human games, the wood-like sound of soccer kicks in the cold air. Such was the world where I from Russian clouds was hurled. 8 In the morning, out of bed I’d hop, and to a lecture rush with whistling cape; at last a ...”

“... the ‘survivor’ bit. The last poet left standing in the saloon. (Think Gregory Peck in Henry King’s The Gunfighter. Grave moustache succumbing to gravity.) Many myths surround the man, among enthusiasts, cultists and close readers, and this has always been one of them: Raworth is unwell but never incapacitated. The moustache may be a little ...”

“... Blood) or refused to make room for her as a Platonic third within a passionate marriage (Henry Fuseli) or abandoned her with an out-of-wedlock child (Gilbert Imlay) or otherwise failed to value her with the intensity, constancy and perseverance she required. These disappointments made her bitterly unhappy. They did not stop her from carrying on with ...”