“... a ‘newer, more flexible picture of Chartism’. First comes a long examination by G. Stedman Jones of ‘The Language of Chartism’. He insists that nervous contemporaries gave a wrong lead to historians by regarding Chartism not as the political programme it professed to be but as essentially social discontent, ‘novel and threatening’. In ...”

“... it does in the case of Meredith and Thackeray. (There is even something self-limiting about Tom Jones as a novel – for the same kind of reason?) As Furbank points out, the novels of Thackeray, Meredith and Trollope frequently take their very form from a social absolute – who is and who isn’t – which must be fundamentally unreal. ‘Evan Harrington ...”

“... isn’t the person I married,’ and one doesn’t need to be unwell to feel what Henry James felt, writing to Rhoda Broughton in November 1915 after she had praised one of (what he called) his ‘old perpetrations’: ‘I think of it, the masterpiece in question, as the work of quite another person than myself, at this date – that of a rich (so ...”

“... Sheerman demanding that Gordon stand down. Minutes later comes word that the pensions secretary, James Purnell, has resigned, leaving behind a message calling on Gordon to go. At least, unlike Hazel, he had the decency to wait until the election was over. How much more of this can we take? 5 June. Awoke to hear Paul Farrelly, the backbencher fingered by ...”

“... early 1980s, Ismail Merchant set out to make The Deceivers. He was without his usual collaborator, James Ivory, who was not enthusiastic about the project. The film eventually appeared in 1988, and was met by a near unanimous lack of critical acclaim. The screenplay was based on a novel by John Masters (1914-83), who had served in the British army in India ...”

“... why is it so unclear whether Gertrude is guilty or innocent? His answer is historical: Hamlet is James I, his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, whose husband, Lord Darnley, was murdered eight months after James’s birth in 1566. Three months after Henry’s death she married the man suspected of being his murderer, ...”

“... Orwell argues that murder is no longer what it used to be, and cites the 1944 case of Elizabeth Jones, an 18-year-old, and an American army deserter, Karl Hulten, who went on a killing spree together, known as the Cleft Chin Murders. They were a Bonnie and Clyde pair, a symptom of the brutality of war and of approaching modernity in dear old ...”

“... his company’s public repertoire at the Globe, received its first documented performance before James I’s court at Whitehall on 26 December 1606. It was then printed in 1608, as M. William Shak-speare, his True Chronicle History of the life and death of King LEAR and his three daughters, but even after spending fifteen years or more training and nerving ...”

“... and myths, mean that it isn’t an easy task to write the history of the artist’s studio. James Hall’s book touches on many things – self-portraits and celebrity, memorabilia and mirrors – and the physical spaces themselves come in and out of view. In this respect, it’s helpful to know that the term ‘studio’ derives from a verb as well as ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... women and three men. There’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm), head of Creative; his wife, Betty (January Jones), who stays at home in upstate New York through her divorce and subsequent remarriage to Henry, looking after her and Don’s three children; Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who rises from twenty-year-old secretary to executive in Don’s team, the first ...”

“... at all except as a figment of one man’s amour fou. The exception is the Hazlitt scholar Stanley Jones. In the late 1960s he succeeded in tracing a direct descendant of Sarah’s younger brother, Micaiah Walker. He pursued certain trails this opened up for him, and published his findings about her and her family in his biography, William Hazlitt: A Life ...”

“... be a master builder, and his achievements ranged from the elegant – the Art Deco bathhouses at Jones Beach on Long Island – to the catastrophic: the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which destroyed thriving neighbourhoods and displaced thousands of people. By 1968, when Moses was finally forced from power, the catastrophes had become impossible to ignore. The ...”

“... less could be said of Orrell’s account of the structure of the original Globe and the Inigo Jones designs for indoor theatres. The book’s scholarship, its commitment, its good intentions lie manifestly beyond dispute. However, there are difficulties.The first and most obvious one lurks in the linked notions of ‘reconstruction’ and ...”

“... Men – they put on The Tragedy of Gowrie, a dramatisation of the attempted assassination of King James by John Ruthven, earl of Gowrie, in 1600. It was doubtless based on the official account, The Earle of Gowries conspiracie against the Kings Maiestie of Scotland. James encouraged frequent reprints of this pamphlet, and ...”