“... unideological, patronage-based one-party government. He agrees that between the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George III, the Tories had no share in government, and were systematically discriminated against in the distribution of local patronage. But where his opponents think 1688 was decisive, he does not; where they think the propertied ...”

“... desire’ for Woodville, as Penn notes, and ‘used to getting what he wanted’. Penn opts for an Anne Boleyn theory of events – in Woodville, Edward ‘met his match’. If he wanted to sleep with her, ‘he needed to marry her first’. Marrying a commoner was a huge gamble for a usurper, however, and is the reason the ceremony was held in secret: the ...”

“... her first sketches in Harper’s and Putnam’s. One of eight children, seven of them female, born to Charles Jarvis Woolson and Hannah Cooper Pomeroy Woolson (James Fenimore Cooper was her uncle) in the 1830s and 1840s, Constance arrived at adolescence with only a single sister, Clara, and a brother, Charles Jarvis Jr. Though Charly seems to have been ...”

“... book, and after being discharged he dictated the first version of this one to his assistant, Anne-Sylvie Malbrancke.The basic facts of the matter are straightforward, and everyone understands them well. You are not supposed to have sex or procreate with certain immediate family members. Typically the list includes your parents, your children and your ...”

“... that peaked in the 1880s and 1890s. Orthography became important: Geoffrey or Jeffrey, Ann or Anne, Stephen or Steven. Girls’ names were especially given to whim and proliferation. In the 1930s, my mother was christened Doreen because a Russian acquaintance of my grandfather said that was the name of the nicest girl he had ever known. This nice Doreen ...”

“... to an upmarket clientele which had at one time included King James’s fashion-mad consort, Queen Anne, and he was – not least – a familiar acquaintance of Shakespeare. A rather respectable figure, it may seem from this summary, an immigrant success story, though there is also some evidence to suggest another, less respectable side to him. Just a few ...”

“... into a footnote about its other author, Ilya Gridneff, an Australian journalist of Russian origin, born in Sydney in 1979 and currently working in Papua New Guinea for the Australian Associated Press, except that the DeWitt/Gridneff partnership doesn’t do much fracturing with footnotes. Epistolary structure and multiple avatars, yes, scans of original ...”

“... Death. According to a venerable tradition Laura was a Provençal woman called Laure de Noves, born in about 1310. She married Hugo or Hughes de Sade, of a landed family from Le Thor, a few miles south-east of Avignon. The marriage contract is dated 6 January 1325. They had at least 11 children. Correlated with Petrarch’s datings this would make her a ...”

“... for example, in place of choice extracts from bygone stories: the numbers of children ‘born into artisan or servant families [who] died before reaching the age of five’, but no examples of fortitude such as that displayed by the youth refusing laudanum on his deathbed: ‘I can bear pain ... but I cannot willingly enter the presence of my Creator ...”

“... reveals that he does indeed have all of Hardy’s consciousness in his head, and that he was born exactly a hundred years after Hardy, to the very minute. Sharon thinks all this will be good for business; she changes the name of her Hampstead shop to Eustacia’s on the Heath, and hopes to persuade Barney to go on a worldwide lecture tour in the persona ...”

“... necessarily treated as a national resource. Such a development is wholeheartedly welcomed by the born-again founders of Gilead, for whom, as Offred’s Commander puts it, ‘Nature’s norm’ has reasserted itself. Offred was allowed to choose between becoming a handmaid and joining the clean-up squads of slave labourers in the outlying regions made ...”

“... a subtler account of the making of a terrorist, you have to turn to a piece of fiction like Anne Devlin’s ‘Naming the names’.) Power sets up a proliferation of outlets for treachery and hostility. His characters, when they’re not expressing weariness, have a vicious and unengaging style of speech: ‘I say fuck you and your likes. You’re all ...”

“... knowing herself to be a witness to a monstrous piece of history (‘I was in the same barracks as Anne Frank. Of course, I didn’t know who she was then. There were just some Dutch girls. They cried all the time.’) Watching the VJ Day commemorations brought it back. ‘I saw those old men, Japanese prisoners of war, and I thought: you shouldn’t ...”

“... traiterous and wicked designs … and also craftily designed to reproach and scandalise [Queen Anne’s] wise and faithful ministry, divide her councils, create variances, disputes and discords in her parliament, and to raise and foment animosities, fears and jealousies amongst all her people’. A reprint was swiftly issued to replace incinerated ...”

“... climate of moral seriousness. His career choices, too, went against the grain.Things started well. Born to a glove-making family in Grasse, Fragonard was articled to a Paris notary as a teenager but his artistic talent was spotted and it was suggested that he study under François Boucher. Boucher sent him for preliminary training with Chardin: six months ...”