“... Kodak, Mathew Gloag’s, the Financial Times, the Sunday Times and Fiji Film. In his preface, Robert Smith, Chairman of the Domesday Committee, observes: Every Briton is something of an historian. Britons have to be or they are not a hundred per cent British ... This country has been and will continue to be governed through its institutions. Through the ...”

“... she came to write of Coleridge as in what he was writing about her beloved brother. When in the winter of 1803-04 he was an unasked guest at Dove Cottage he was, she says, ‘lame and sick, screamed out in the night, durst not sleep etc etc, continually wanting coffee, broth, or something or other’. She and Mary had to sit up to wake him from ...”

“... sandwiches and told she was spoilt. When her father died she became her mother’s companion, in winter pushing her Bath chair along the Promenade des Anglais; in summer reading her Carlyle’s History of Frederick the Great. It was by then the sort of sad, worthy life that Russian novels are full of and when she came to write her memoirs it was clear ...”

“... shift occurred and America emerged as the dominant world influence on the English language. Robert Burchfield, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, recently pointed out in the opening segment of the engaging BBC/PBS series The Story of English, that the centre of gravity of American English has itself shifted in the last generation from the ...”

“... about the Renaissance portrait, held at the conservative Metropolitan Museum of Art last winter, was revisionist enough to begin with relics and icons). It takes a wrecking ball to the popular notion of the Renaissance as both the death of the medieval and the rebirth of the ancient, for here the medieval persists into the early modern period and the ...”

“... official silence around much of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal; for the restoration of pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, global improvements in health and education, and closer co-operation between governments to deal with international crises. You don’t have to agree with all of his causes, or believe they are practical, to accept that he has become a ...”

“... author, William Jackson, a prominent figure in Exeter musical life. In a letter of 3 October 1799 Robert Southey sent Coleridge the unusual story he had recently heard from Jackson. At the age of 16 Bampfylde had gone to see the composer in Exeter, and had astonished him with his remarkable powers of improvisation on the harpsichord. Even after taking ...”

“... vote. Three essays provide insights into the changing social basis of Conservative support. Robert Waller’s position as research director for the Harris opinion poll has given him access to the surveys undertaken for the Conservative Party over the last thirty years. Here, simultaneously, is evidence of who voted Conservative and of the perceptions ...”

“... The person who elicited his strongest feelings was a young officer met during the war, called Robert MacGill (Hogg ‘loved him’, he said, ‘almost like an adopted son’). Hogg’s conduct was wild, irascible and volatile, both verbally and physically (he got into a number of fist fights at Oxford). He also had what another brother, Neil, described as ...”

“... be determined’, the dozens of large snakes deposited on Southern Californian beaches during the winter of 1995 ‘are not some Biblical curse visited on the region to punish the wicked and sybaritic’, Mike Davis responds that ‘native Californians might disagree.’ What is the difference between the Marxist urban social critic and the religious ...”

“... Churchill back into the Cabinet at the age of 82, and then, as Britain settled down to a morose winter of Suez-induced petrol rationing, going off to recover his health in the West Indies, not only provoking popular outrage but opening the door to a Cabinet coup. Even after that he continued for years to dream that he might return to politics at the ...”

“... perhaps millions, of the estimated fifty billion migratory birds that annually leave their winter shelters in Africa to summer in Europe.’ And this, on forests in the early 13th century: ‘They were still extensive and home to wolves, wild boars and, outside of England, bears, but they were also dotted with little endogamous woodland communities ...”

“... Amara, more than 11,000 British Indian soldiers were besieged by Turkish troops through the bitter winter of 1915-16. Outside the city walls, numerous relief efforts were fumbled, costing more than 20,000 casualties; inside them, hundreds died before the remnant surrendered in April 1916, only to suffer a punishing captivity. Like many set-piece imperial ...”

“... about evacuees or eyeing the shortcomings of a nation besieged. His sets and costumes for Robert Helpmann’s ballet Miracle in the Gorbals of 1944 were generally agreed to be the only things worth remembering about it. He attended rehearsals at Sadler’s Wells: ‘2 sharp pokes with broken bottles in the face then followed a sort of descent de la ...”

“... of self-enchantment, a ripple in time from our ancestors outfacing the cold, dark harbingers of winter with heat and light. And what better way to make light than with fireworks? Even the lid of the box was gaudily thrilling, like a fairground or circus. And beneath lay a tessellated array of shapes in comic-book colours, with daring names like ...”